


A God's Heart

by Maerchenmord



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Eren Is An Impulsive Brat, Gore, Levi Is A Lonely God, M/M, Rating May Change, Temple Guard Eren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 02:05:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maerchenmord/pseuds/Maerchenmord
Summary: His story was as old as their people, ancient but never forgotten as they owed him a life filled with prosperity and peace.Their god had fought in a never-ending conflict with his brothers and sisters in the old days, tired of the destruction, pain and misery that their battles cast upon the humans.Escaping to the realm of man, he had lived among them, aided and protected by their unexpected kindness and when misfortune had struck, war and plague invading the homes of the very people that had shared their lives and warmth with him, he had made the ultimate sacrifice.His heart.Ripped from his divine body and buried in the dirt with an eternal oath on his lips, he had laid the foundation for their homelands, vowing that no ill would ever come to them and that every soul filled with devotion and benevolence shall find protection in his realm till the end of time.





	1. What Lurks In The Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my dear readers, this is a little something I am writing on the side. I got the idea and thought it might be a fun read, but I don't plan for it to be too long. Maybe five chapters, I don't have it completely figured out yet. Initially it was meant to be a lot shorter but as I kept writing and writing, I thought I might as well post a first part of it to see what you think? Updates might not be as regular as on my current main fic, but I intend to write for it whenever I find the time. Feel free to let me know what you think of the setting, I hope you will like it and would love to read your comments! Thanks for your time, I hope you will find it well spent reading this :)
> 
> As I always mention in my fic's, I'm not a native English speaker. I'm doing my very best, but I'm certainly not on par with most of the writers here and I appreciate any comment or help to improve the quality of my writing. Don't hesitate to tell me if I make mistakes.

 

Eren's eyes wandered over the crowds in front of the temple as the first rays of sunshine broke through the clouds and painted bright spots on the cobblestone all over the ceremonial square. It was early, too early for his liking, but the people were eager and restless, singing and dancing under the pennants hanging between the houses and throwing flowers into the air as they laughed and cheered.

The smell of sizzling meat was heavy in the air, mixing with the sweet scent of warm honey wine filling jugs to the brim that were handed through the crowd and shared by the people. He watched as children ran past him, bells tingling on their ankles and wrists, the first blossoms of spring from the border woven into their hair and he couldn't suppress the amused smile that began to tug on the corner of his lips.  
_As if it mattered here..._

The temple guard straightened his posture as the first gong chimed through the air, his eyes following the elder who descended the stairs of the sanctuary in slow, careful steps and began his speech soon after that reminded them of what they celebrated today. And when the masses chanted their prayer, Eren was one of them who whispered the words into the cold morning air with an open heart and not a trace of doubt in his mind.

_Gracious god of mine, you offered me your heart_

_and I shall pay you back a thousandfold._

_As your sacrifice is undying, so shall be my love for you._

_Leviathan, hallowed be your name_

_and may your glory shine on us._

_Your children await, your will shall be done_

_for all eternity._

The young man saluted when another gong rang loud and clear over the square and he made his way to the stairs, stepping in line with fellow guards to receive his blessing, before the elder would start his way through the people and bestow Leviathans mercy on them.

He had begun his duty a few months ago, the laws requiring the servants of the god to be pure hearted, unsullied in body and soul.

Only children were deemed to be good enough to start the strenuous schooling of their priests, as they were not yet tainted by the evil of man.

Their training itself was long and unforgiving, years of devotion to their cause and when they finally reached adolescence, their services were called upon.

Eren was eleven years old, when he had moved into the vast temple grounds and now, after living through his sixteenth winter, he had almost finished his first year as a guard of Leviathans heart.

Bowing his head, he received a kiss above his brows, before the elder raised his own fist to his heart and the young man stepped out of the line to continue with his routine, that had been interrupted by the festivities.

Not a single man was ever missing in their village during the annual celebrations in the very center of their lands and even the soldiers among them took turns to leave their positions around the temple and at their borders, to pray and pay their respect to their deity.

Probably, thought Eren, because they had no doubt that Leviathan was guarding them. A firm belief that was cemented by the miracles their people had been blessed with, visible and palpable for each of them to witness.

Sina lived in never-ending summer, as if encased by a bubble. Their lands were fertile and green all throughout the year and only when reaching the borders could one distinct the season they lived in.

Eren had been on patrol close to the outer realm a few days ago and seen the ground still covered in snow, the first buds of spring flowers forcing their way through the icy layers, only to abruptly stop in front of his feet and turn into lush green. It never seized to amaze him.

Sickness passed them by and many people reached an old age without so much as an angry twitch in their joints. Their children were bright and beautiful, known all throughout the country for their innocent loveliness and the herbs that grew only in Sina were famous far and wide, unique in their capability to cure sickness like nothing else in the world.

The envy of outsiders didn't concern them. Whenever rulers looked at the village and the surrounding lands with malicious intent and tried to invade or burn them to the ground, they had been held back long before their arrival by raging storms, forest fires or avalanches made of rocks and dirt in the surrounding regions.

Leviathan protected them, and only good-hearted souls were allowed to enter his realm.

Eren made his way through the celebrating crowd to reach the stables at the other end of the square. He had received his blessing and it was time for him to get his instructions where he was needed to replace another soldier for them to do the same.

When a loud voice calling his name reached his ear, he stopped and turned around, looking at Armin and his sister trying to tackle people aside to reach him.

"Eren! Aren't you going to stay?"

Shaking his head slowly, he smiled when his friend finally stopped in front of him and eyed him from head to toe, taking his soft leather uniform in that was decorated with intricate ceremonial embroideries.

"The guards around the city need to be replaced. My comrades need their chance to pray."

"Ah, makes sense!"

The blond boy grinned and Mikasa stepped forward and removed the flower crown that sat on her head before she held it out in front of her. Eren bowed down until he felt the soft weight of the floral wreath on his hair and straightened up with a smile, barely catching the soft whisper from her lips.

"Be safe."

"Leviathan guides.", he answered, and both of his friends nodded before they solemnly returned his words.

"Leviathan guides."

 

~~~

 

"Eren! Good to see you!"

The young man smiled as he approached the stables and saluted to the maiden that guarded the horses today.

"Hello Sasha."

She scurried to the entrance and grabbed a giant pamphlet before she began to thumb through the pages.

"Let me see... Ah! You're going to replace Krista at the border. Take the brown mare in the last box, she's saddled and ready to go."

"Thank you. I'll see you tonight.", he answered and turned around to get his horse, before he would start his short journey to the outer parts of their land.

Sina wasn't huge, a forty-minute ride from the center of the village was all it took to reach the borders, where their mystical shelter ended, and the real world began and Eren wondered how much progress spring had made during the few days he hadn't seen the outer realm.

After swinging his leg over the wide back of the horse, he straightened in his saddle and Sasha looked up from the other end of the stable where she was already busy with the next guard.

"Leviathan guides!", she shouted as he left, and he nodded and raised his fist to his chest again, before he guided his mare out into the open street.

The cobblestone below him turned into sand soon and he urged his horse into a fast gallop when he reached the fields around the village to arrive at his destination as soon as possible.

He never got tired of the ever-living green, the gentle breeze and the soft clouds in the sky that made way for the sun during the day, no matter how heavy they might have hung above the roofs in the morning.

The soft chirping of birds and the buzzing of insects in the meadows was like music to his ears and his heart felt warm and wide, whenever he strolled or rode through Sina.

All thanks to Leviathan.

His story was as old as their people, ancient but never forgotten as they owed him a life filled with prosperity and peace.

The god had fought in a never-ending conflict with his brothers and sisters in the old days, tired of the destruction, pain and misery that their battles cast upon the humans.

Escaping to the realm of man, he had lived among them, aided and protected by their unexpected kindness and when misfortune had struck, war and plague invading the homes of the very people that had shared their lives and warmth with him, he had made the ultimate sacrifice.

His heart.

Ripped from his divine body and buried in the dirt with an eternal oath on his lips, he had laid the foundation for their homelands, vowing that no ill would ever come to them and that every soul filled with devotion and benevolence shall find protection in his realm till the end of time.

And just as Leviathan had offered his heart to them, they offered their own until this very day. Their gratitude, their loyalty, their love.

Some outsiders had smiled at the inhabitants of Sina, or even called the _Children of Leviathan_ out to be a mad cult but Eren knew better, because he only needed to take a look around.

Leviathans heart may not have been a physical thing they could dig up from the ground but they all knew that it was there, it's energy and magic pulsing through the land, granting them harmony and guidance and they had never forgotten his words and let compassion rule their actions instead of greed.

Whenever the people of the outer realm needed help, Sina would answer with food, medicine and clothes until they had nothing left to give, knowing that their god would not fail them and bestow his generous gifts upon them for their sacrifices.

Thus, the people of Sina had become known as the bearers of kindness and their origin was a title in itself whenever they ventured outside of their homelands to aid those in need, guided by Leviathans example.

And Eren was one of them.

A temple guard, protecting the sanctuary of Sina, the holy ground where Leviathan had offered his heart to bring everlasting peace to them and he and his people prayed every day, that his gift may never be forgotten.

He digged his heels harder into the sides of his studious mount and the mare reacted with enthusiasm, ran faster, almost made him fly through the fields, wind ruffling his hair and Eren thought, that maybe, she felt it too. The warmth, the elation that didn't just course through the people here but the very land itself. Everything touched by divine grace, palpable in the air.

The border showed in the distance soon enough. Vast forests, still covered in snow, lined by a few green specks where seeds of the trees had hit the ground of Leviathan's realm and grown taller and lusher than their brothers and sisters rooted in the cold earth only meters away.

There were no walls, no fences, no gates that protected them from the outside world, knowing that their god would shield them. Only a small canopy spending shadow for a horse or two at one side of the sandy path and a little shed next to it, open towards the road because they never feared rain or snow or storm in this region.

He could see Krista, when he reached the outpost. Sitting under the low roof on a table, filling paperwork, while she hummed a soft tune and the look in her eyes was warm as he greeted her. It was what made her worthy to serve, this unending kindness that showed in all of her expressions, all of her gestures and words.

Eren was a bit of an odd case, he knew, because the children chosen to protect Leviathan's heart were expected to show inclinations of the god's memorable traits. To be generous and selfless and benevolent.

It was why Mikasa hadn't been picked, despite her deep loyalty and belief, because her reasons had been selfish. Her wish to stay with Eren had been her strongest motive and the elder had seen it and denied her without judgement, without belittling her intentions, because protecting those close to you was a noble thing to do. It simply wasn't enough to serve their god.

The young guard hadn't held any deep desire to dedicate himself to the deity either, hadn't shown the same devotion and merciful heart as people like Krista but he had been deemed worthy.

It was the righteousness, the fierce sense of justice and his never-ending aspiration, not to serve Leviathan but the people of this realm, if not the whole world, that had granted him a place among the servants of their god and he still remembered the day of his summoning vividly. The pride in his mother's eyes and the words falling from her lips as she held his small hands with tears of joy streaming down her face.

_I always knew you were meant for greater things. The world isn't built on kindness, Eren, but were a wrong is done, you will make a right._

And so he tried.

Sina was a safe place, a haven, and their beliefs and wealth had led the people to live good and decent lives, but they were only human and where his brothers and sisters in arms never seized to reach out with understanding and gentle words, he showed a different kind of conviction and formed solutions on his hands and knees, with hard work and determination to make himself better, to make things better, to make others find the best version of themselves.

He tied the reins of the mare loosely, before he stepped into the small outpost and raised his fist to his heart, while Krista mirrored his motions with a smile on her lips, that left him feeling warm and content.

He liked her and while he had never thought about it too deeply, he knew that he would be a happy man if she would ever form some sort of deeper affection for him. The idea of having a family on his own didn't weigh heavy on his mind though. He was young and so was she, just like most of the guards he called his friends and they all knew, that they had time to find their ways, granted by the peace that Leviathan had bestowed upon them.

"Are you taking over?"

He nodded and relaxed his stance. "Yes. I received my blessing and can stay here for the rest of the day."

The small blonde gifted him with another smile. She wouldn't have to make a hasty return and could take her time to see the festivities, thanks to Eren's willingness to cover for her on the outpost till the next guard would arrive in a few hours. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

They shared another salute, before she left her place behind the table and walked the few meters to their horses. When she was saddled up and ready to go, she took another minute to rework the braids on her uniform.

Female guards wore a different set of leather armor, fairly close to those of their male counterparts but designed to accommodate their shape. Where Eren's uniform was tightly wound around his body, hers was open on many parts, closed by lacing it together.

Their clothing wasn't custom tailored but handed down from generation to generation and the servants of Leviathan held great pride in keeping the leather soft and well cared for, for the next guard who would be deemed worthy to wear it.

Eren's own had been given to him by an older servant who had left his duties to marry and lead a simple life. A man going by the name of Mike, who was tall and broad and had made the young man wonder how he was supposed to fill out his clothes, but the guard had simply smiled, leaned in to sniff a whiff of his scent and assured him, that he would grow to an imposing height himself.

Up until then, he was left with carefully tucking the excess of soft leather on his legs and wrists into his boots and gloves as good as possible, always cautious not to bunch it up and damage it too much.

Krista, he thought, had it easier, since her uniform was designed to go with the changes of her body from the start. Not only would it fit another woman one day who would simply tie the laces to wrap the leather snugly to her body, but it would also adjust to the changes of her own bust and hips as she grew older.

When she was done, the young woman patted the neck of her horse that had been patiently standing in place and threw Eren a last look. "Leviathan guides!"

He nodded and waved, returning those words to her and soon enough she steered her mount to the sandy path, dug her heels into its sides and took off.

The young guard sighed peacefully, before he looked at the pages of the journal on the table, not finding anything worth mentioning there.

The border had been peaceful. The weather was as usual. The outer realm was calm.

He took a seat on the chair she had previously occupied and looked out of the shed to observe his surroundings. The calm mare, drinking some water from a trough, the grass on the other side of the road that was gently swishing in the wind and the playful birds in the sky, chasing each other with delighted chirps in a never-ending game and he felt deeply humbled.

Being born and raised in a place like Sina certainly was a blessing in itself.

 

~~~

 

A noise rose Eren from his slumber and he jerked in the chair, almost toppling to the ground in the process.

He had been sitting in the shed for hours, finally taking a walk along the border for a while, before he had returned, just to repeat his silent watch and at some point, waking in the early hours of the morning to attend to the festival had finally taken its toll on his body.

He did't know how long he had been sleeping but the sun was low now, almost about to disappear below the horizon and the young man frowned as he straightened up and stretched his muscles, sore from sleeping in a stiff, wooden chair for god knows how long.

The next guard should have been here a long, long time ago.

Eren looked over to the makeshift stable, to see if another horse was there, since his comrade might have arrived but decided to let him sleep and patrol along the border in the meantime, but the only thing he saw was his mare and he suddenly understood what had woken him in the first place.

She was restless.

Steady huffs and low neighs sounded from her direction as she was fidgeting in place and pulled lightly on her tied reins as if she wasn't really aiming to escape him but at least loosen the straps in case she needed to flee.

Forcing down a yawn, he stepped out of the shed and walked to the steed, before he put a gentle hand on her neck and stroked the short fur, rubbing soothing circles into her skin. "What's wrong girl...? You don't like being out in the dark?"

The horse nuzzled him, her head pressing down on his shoulder as she rubbed it against his throat and cheek and the guard chuckled lowly.

"I know... You should've been home a long time ago..."

Raising his eyes, he looked down the road, gauging if anyone was going to arrive here anytime soon, before he glanced along both sides of the border without spotting anything there either.

Leviathan granted them unending summer but even their god couldn't change the course of the sun. The shadows had grown long and the world around him was tinged in a mix of orange and gold. Considering that winter wasn't quite over yet, and the light of the day vanished early, it couldn't be that late yet. Still too late for his replacement though.

"You haven't seen anyone arriving here by any chance?", he mumbled, obviously not expecting an answer from his horse but she began to huff again, more restless and unsettled, nudging his shoulder with her head several times, as if she wanted him to turn around.

Eren furrowed his brows before he looked behind himself at the border and saw...

Nothing.

"What's gotten into you?"

He was about to turn to her and shoot the mare a scolding look, when he spotted something on the sandy path between them and the first flecks of snow covered earth, barely visible in the vanishing light of the late evening.

Traces in the dirt, the shape of hoofs.

"What the..."

He followed the trail with his eyes, coming from the village, crouching down to take a closer look.

It had been a guard, easy to tell by the imprint on the horseshoe that had followed the path up until the canopy.

The servant hadn't dismounted his horse from what he could tell, no human footprints to be seen but the animal must have made a few steps in the same spot before the guard had decided to continue following the road, not even caring to wake Eren and inform him of his departure.

Maybe he had meant to leave the village behind?

He shook his head slowly, knowing that there hadn't been a person in ages who ventured out of their realm without letting the people of Sina know about it.

Their land was a peaceful place and its inhabitants barely ever left but whoever decided to do so, had always been granted free passage. Nobody was forced to sneak their way out, stealing a steed while they were supposed to be on duty instead.

Something else must have forced the guard to abandon the post and patrol into the outer realm. Something, that worried him enough to venture over the border.

Eren sighed in frustration as he got up, unable to think of any good reason why the servant hadn't woken him but had decided to go on his own.

Maybe it had meant to be just a quick look, before he would leave his horse to rest under the canopy and shake the fellow guard from his dreams. A quick look that had ended in his disappearance.

The mare wheezed, as he walked back to the shed and bent over the table where Mikasa's flower crown was still sitting, to rip an empty page from the journal and scribble a short note on it.

Returning to his steed, he slipped the folded paper below the leather strap around her nostrils, not even receiving a flinch from the animal in return at the new sensation.

"Stay here.", he undid the reins, giving her a stern look and repeated his words. "Stay here."

The horse huffed but didn't move and Eren knew, that the only way she would run from this place would be if she faced immediate danger, taking her back to the village where people would find the note he had left with her.

He steeled himself for a moment, whispering a few more encouraging words into her ear, meant for both of them if he was honest, before he turned around and faced the border ahead.

The path was almost completely dark now, the sun going to disappear in a few minutes and the shadows of the looming trees covered in snow stole the last bits of visibility from the ground.

Eren felt naked.

He had no weapons, had never needed them and carrying them was considered both, unnecessary and barbaric in this region of peace.

The thin leather of his garments wouldn't protect him from the cold for long and he had to make it swift but didn't dare to take the mare with him, that was already anxious and nervous in the safety of their homeland.

He looked at the sky and closed his eyes in hesitation. Maybe this was a bad idea and he should return to the village and ask for support but the worry that one of his brothers was stranded in the outer realm needing his help outweighed his fears by far.

And Eren wasn't alone, would never be, because his deity would protect him in times of need and he whispered the words into the shallow breeze to remind himself of the god's unending love, that would aid him in the darkness.

"Leviathan guides..."

Taking a deep breath, he started walking, didn't pause as he crossed into the outer realm and the cold air of the night hit him, still freezing despite the milder temperatures that must have been showing during the days by now.

He focused on the trail, followed the imprints of hoofs in the snow, still prominent but barely visible to his eyes that were so utterly useless in the fading light.

His strides were fast and wide, but he made sure to take his surroundings in as he walked. So far, he was heading forward in a straight line, but directions could change, and he wasn't willing to get lost in the deep forests that surrounded Sina since the beginning of time.

When he turned around after a while, the border was barely visible, a mere idea, the sight of it peeking through the trees in the distance but it might as well have been an imagination and the young guard huffed, before he continued further into the unknown darkness.

Just what had made the guard venture so far outside the border? It was cold. So fucking cold and the night was a black, crushing thing he felt in his bones.

Surely there wasn't much more visibility during the day, as the treetops loomed heavy above him, shutting the sky out and the temperatures might have been slightly warmer but were too cold to endure in their uniforms for a long time nevertheless.

Something must have unsettled the guard enough to stray so far into the woods and Eren remained cautious of hidden enemies that could lurk in the shadows as he kept walking.

Kept walking and walking and walking, until the sight of the border was nothing but an idea, only silence surrounding him, occasionally disturbed by the sound of the wind or the call of a lonely owl.

The snow crunched loudly under his feet with every step and the low hanging branches of smaller trees and bushes among the tall pines and spruces, didn't carry any leaves yet and made him flinch occasionally, when they came into his field of vision like slender arms and claws that reached out for him.

It was easy to see just how old the forest war, despite the missing daylight. Wild and dark, the trail leading from the sandy path in Sina soon vanishing in the untamed brushwood. There were few roads leading into their realm, that they maintained, since both, the arrival and departure of people was rare.

Maybe it was nice here during the summer months, lush green and tall trees growing high into the sky, but it was hard to imagine at the moment.

Right now, the blackness around Eren was a scary, living thing, the sky above him covered, making it impossible to use the stars for navigation. The cold was creeping into his clothes, biting the uncovered skin on his hands and face and the silence amplified every small sound infinitely, making him jump at every noise he heard from a nearby animal of the ruffling of the wind, sometimes even his own steps.

Despite knowing his way, he felt small, insignificant, _lost_.

Lost in the sheer vastness of the woods that could hide a million threats, stole the light of the rising moon away and drowned everything in an eerie calm, and when he stepped through yet another line of trees, he knew he should have trusted his guts and left this godforsaken, ghostly forest behind and send for help.

Instead he stopped in his tracks after what must have been at least half an hour of walking, frozen in place from the sight in front of him.

 

A lonely horse on the ground.

Dead.

Bled out.

 

What must have been deep crimson looked like a sea of black liquid, mixing with the pure, white snow in the darkness of the night.

He looked around, hesitated for a moment and listened carefully but couldn't hear a sound over his suddenly slamming heartbeat, that had his blood rushing in his ears and his next steps were tentative and silent, as he made his way to the steed and crouched down next to it.

It had been mauled, easy to see despite the absence of light around him. Its body ripped to shreds in a way no man, no weapon could ever do, and its rider was gone. Nowhere to be seen in close proximity, no traces of feet or blood, as if he had never been here in the first place.

Eren shivered.

Not from the cold, the biting wind in his face that swept through the trees, but the dread inside of him that grew more and more the longer he looked at the horrific display in front of him.

He had to turn back.

It wasn't safe here.

May it have been wolves or a bear or whatever else could kill a whole god damn horse, he couldn't do much but wish his comrade the best of luck, because outrunning a pack when he had nothing but his feet to carry him and his fists to attack, was an impossible feat.

He had to flee, before they found him.

As he got up, he frowned upon his own thoughts, looking down at the dead animal again and gulping heavily, because something... Something wasn't right.

If a predator had killed the horse... It would have eaten it.

Eyes wandering over the lifeless body, he shivered yet again, his frightened gaze flying around in the next second to make sure that he was still alone.

The mount was in horrible condition, basically sliced open but still whole at the same time. Someone... _Something_ had ripped it apart, only to leave it here and rot.

Eren bit his lip to keep himself silent, swallowing the fearful sounds that threatened to escape from his throat as panic began to rise in his gut. He wanted to close his eyes, shut the world out, the danger, the horror but refrained from doing so, more scared of a silent assailant than the gore in his field of vision.

Something in these woods had killed the horse for no purpose. Out of joy or boredom or just because it could, and the steed's owner had simply... _vanished_.

He turned around, his eyes quickly searching for his own traces in the snow, as to not run into the wrong direction in his panic and as soon as he found them, he bolted forward through the trees, trying to be fast but not too loud at the same time and it took him long, so very long to realize that the darkness had closed in, that even the wind in the leaves didn't make a sound anymore and the air that had felt cold around him before was suddenly _suffocating_.

The young guard came to a halt, the path still visible in front of him, imprints of his feet showing on the ground but he couldn't see further than what felt like a few meters, could almost hear whispers in his ears, despite the absence of sounds and the constant shiver on his skin turned into an insistent tremble of his muscles, that had his whole body shaking in fear.

 

He wasn't alone.

He was going to die here.

 

Eren swallowed, standing still for another few seconds, trying to figure out where the invisible enemy was lurking, but it might as well have been the shadows themselves that were chasing him. Nothing to be seen in the endless darkness that enveloped him.

The border was straight ahead but far. Twenty, maybe fifteen minutes if he ran like a man possessed and there wasn't a chance in hell that he would make it, knowing that something was already watching him in this very moment as he desperately tried to calm his wild breathing.

He had to though. Had to try, if not for himself then for the people of Sina.

To warn them, to protect them from the danger that surrounded them.

 _For them_ , Eren told himself. _For them_.

He took off in the blink of an eye, fast feet trampling over the ground, sliding through the wet snow, jumping over roots and bushes as he chanted his resolve in his mind again and again.

 _For them_.

 

The dark fog around him seemed to dissipate for a short moment, before it closed around him again with new vigor, confirming his assumptions that it hadn't been just the night around him that had cast the forest into lifeless shadows, but he didn't dwell on it, just kept running. Faster, faster still until he felt his heart jumping in his chest madly, his lung burning below his ribs.

The cold air numbed his skin, not letting him feel the scratches of thin branches and bushes in his way that hit his hands and cheeks as he kept charging forward.

Maybe... Maybe he could make it?

 

He surged through the lines of trees, unable to see his own footprints in the snow any longer but just headed forward, not willing to be deterred by the blackness that tried to make him stray.

His lungs were filled with ice, his breath wheezing and painful, as he gulped the freezing air in to keep his mind clear and his muscles working.

These woods wouldn't be his grave. Not today.

Looking down at his aching legs, he spotted the first tendrils of shadows reaching out for him, almost making him jump but he forced himself to keep running, to keep trying to escape.

It was impossible to map out the way ahead now, with him dodging trees and branches in the last second as they came into view, but he turned his head nevertheless to cast a look over his shoulder and stare into the abyss of nothingness that lay behind him.

Only darkness, that followed him, the shapes of teeth and claws forming in his neck as he sprinted through the snow and Eren snapped his head around, barely avoided another trunk in front of him and willed his tired, burning muscles to accelerate again and again, whenever he felt the deadly presence behind him closing in, but he _knew_.

He knew, he wouldn't make it.

He wouldn't fucking make it and the realization of that hitting him full force almost let him stumble but he kept running still, kept hoping and when the eerie, deathly essence began to reach out for him, he did the only thing that was left in his screaming mind, the only thing that sparked warmth and guidance in his heart in this place of evil.

Eren prayed.

 

" _LEVIATHAN!_ "

His voice boomed through the darkness, even though he had no strength left in his lungs as he kept running.

"Gracious god of mine!"

Another shadow nipped on his neck, barely managed to graze him but it made the young guard conjure the last of his strength in a frenzy of panic, as the words spilled from his frozen lips.

"You offered me your heart and I shall pay you back- "

A low hanging branch hit his face and he stumbled forward unseeing, but the wild beasts in his back didn't close in, didn't reach out with their deathly claws and fangs as if they were holding their breath in the wake of his words.

"Shit! I- I shall pay you back a thousandfold! As your sacrifice is undying, so shall be my love for you!"

He felt the icy grip of darkness around his ankles, trying to slow him down, to stop him, but he pushed forward with unyielding resolve.

"Leviathan! Hallowed be your name! And- And may your glory shine on us! _Please!!"_

His left leg stung and crumbled below him in the next second, encased by shadows, caught between deathly fangs made of blackness and Eren screamed through the uncaring woods around him, as he painfully hit the ground, tried to scramble away and whimpered the last words through tears and exhaustion.

"Your- Your children... Your will shall... waiting... for all eternity..."

He closed his eyes, shut down the sight of the beasts made of night and death, that reached out to tear him apart with vicious talons and conjured pictures of his family and friends instead.

He knew it was over when cold engulfed him and drowned his senses in nothing but emptiness, but it couldn't destroy the glimmer of warmth that burned inside of him from the memories of his home and as he felt his consciousness dwindling, he whispered a last wish into the night. Words that wouldn't make sense to anyone who didn't know his thoughts, his feelings. Words that still held so much meaning, carefully wrapped up in simplicity but carrying the weight of a loving heart and a million smiles.

_"For them..."_


	2. A Festering Wound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back with another chapter (since it's ready and I'm still working on my main fic - ugh). I hope you enjoy it, thank you for the positive feedback so far, it made me really happy :) Leave me your thoughts, if you want. I'm always happy to read them! <3

Waking up felt like a tidal wave crashing down on him to bury him under a myriad of sensations, the most prominent being pain.

His whole body ached, or at least everything he was still able to feel, since a good part of his limbs had turned numb from the cold that was still creeping in on him, slowly traveling further to turn more of his flesh into ice.

The snow under his side must have melted from his fading body heat at some point, patiently drenching his leather armor throughout the night until it hit his skin and soaked him thoroughly, freezing his kidneys and letting his bones ache.

His vision was blurry when he blinked his eyes open, trying to ignore the continues throb on his forehead and it took him a lot longer than it should have to realize, that someone was crouching in front of him in the faint light of what must have been the early hours of the morning.

But Eren just couldn't see. Couldn't focus his eyes enough to make out more than a few centimeters and all his pounding head was able to gather after a few long minutes was, that the pain above his brows originated from a wooden stick that was continuously poking into his skin.

"Wha..."

His attempt to speak was slurred but loud enough to catch attention and the silent figure dropped the slim branch he had used to prod Eren like a dead animal and shifted to rest his forearms on his widely spread knees.

"Finished your beauty sleep?"

"Who...", his voice sounded a hundred years old and he coughed as soon as the first word was forced out of his mouth. The dry winter air had turned his throat into a desert of pain and he heaved heavily, before the crisp voice of his company cut through the silence.

"Levi."

"What...?"

"My name."

The young guard nodded without understanding the words and made another attempt to look at the stranger dressed in black but couldn't make out much more but that he was pale with raven hair and seemed to wear dark gloves.

Trying to sit up, he felt that he couldn't, all parts of his body either numb or strained from his escape through the forest and he puffed an exhausted breath into the morning air, his head lolling back down to its former spot as the images of the last night slowly came back to him and realization began to dawn.

 

Eren was alive.

 

He had survived the terrors of the forest, the shadows, the demonic beasts made of darkness that had chased him and his unfocused eyes wandered back to the figure in front of him, still crouching in the snow.

"You..."

"Levi."

"What...", he broke out into another coughing fit and missed how his bystander wrinkled his nose.

"You mean what happened?"

The guard nodded slowly, feeling on the verge of passing out again from the sheer amount of strength it cost him to move his head and he vaguely registered, that the man next to him shrugged.

"Hell if I know. Some idiot asked me to come here and all I found was you and your company."

"My..."

An angry groan silenced Eren's attempt to stumble through the next question before the figure leaned in.

"Talking to you is physically painful. If I have to listen to you like this for another minute, I'm going to gut myself."

He saw a dark hand closing in on his face, before a cool touch pressed into his cheek and the guard gasped loudly, feeling his vision clearing within seconds, the pain and cold bleeding from his body, leaving nothing but a strong, buzzing warmth in his bones.

The young man coughed again as if he had broken through the surface of the ocean, swallowing air and hitting his chest with a suddenly cooperative arm, before he raised his head and looked at the figure in front of him with newly sharpened eyes.

 

Black.

 

Black hair, black eyeballs and black clothes, and even what Eren had mistaken for dark gloves were slim, long digits that held his cheek, drenched in darkness, as if his fingers had been tattooed up to the knuckles before the color bled into the pale skin on his hands.

His body froze only for a second, before he scrambled backwards as a new wave of panic rushed under his skin and he yelled a lout " _Fuck!"_ at the sight before his eyes.

His hasty retreat met a quick end, when he collided with something in his back and his head snapped around to look at a body, covered in black fur, slim tendrils of shadows still rising from it and reaching out for him while his hands slid through the snow on the ground, suddenly slippery and sticky and _red_.

The young guard jerked away from the corpse, crawling a few meters before he took the small clearing in that he and the stranger occupied, and his eyes widened at the sight.

"What- "

His gaze flew to the creature who had gotten up from his crouching position, hands on his hips now, as he followed Eren's glance to the lifeless bodies strewn everywhere, puddles of blood seeping out of them into the snow.

"What the hell are you?!"

Dark eyes wandered back to him and the small man huffed, before he folded his arms in front of his chest and repeated himself.

"Levi. You're a god damn imbecile or something?"

"But..."

The stranger rolled his eyes, or at least Eren assumed he did, but it was hard to tell considering that his pupils were black. And his irises. And his whole fucking eyeballs.

He smoothed out his clothes. For what reason, the guard didn't know since they were completely tattered. Layers upon layers of ripped, black fabric.

His hair was greasy, his skin dull and pale, the dark eyes rimmed by shadows and his lips almost without a hint of color. The man looked... lifeless.

Eren shook his head, trying to shake the panic off as well as his brain went into overdrive.

He was still alive, his enemies slain around him and the creature in front of him had lifted the fog of cold and pain, probably saving him a second time by doing so.

He was feeling as if he was going to piss himself, but he tried to swallow his fears down because if he irritated the stranger any further, he might end up on the ground right next to the monsters that had chased him through the night.

Deep breaths. He could do this. He _had_ to do this _right_.

Wetting his lips and clearing his throat, he tried anew, hoping to get on good terms with his otherworldly savior.

"I'm sorry... Levi..."

The small man looked up, cocking his head as if intrigued but didn't speak and Eren took it as his cue to continue.

"I am... surprised? I have never seen someone like you. Are you...", his eyes wandered around aimlessly for a moment, trying to avoid the disturbing sight of the man and find the appropriate words but failing to do so and opting for the most direct approach instead. "...human?"

Silence stretched between them at his words, the creature eyeing him thoughtfully, while the young guard did his very best not to stare at the gruesome imitation of a man, before Levi shrugged. "That depends."

"It depends?" Eren got slowly to his feet, feeling that his defensive cowering on the ground several meters away from the man was neither friendly nor respectful and he didn't want to give Levi any reason to end him the same way he had killed the beasts around them.

The creature was a frightening sight for the young man, but he had helped him from what the guard could tell and both his aid, as well as the fact that he seemed to be a deadly opponent meant, that Eren was probably better off showing some manners.

Levi hummed in response, apparently thinking again, before he shrugged a second time and threw the question right back at him with a smirk. "What makes one human?"

Already about to answer, the brunette guard frowned, stopping the words from spilling over his lips in the last second. It might certainly serve him better to consider his next sentences well instead of rushing into it head first as he usually did, and it provided enough time for the question to truly sink in.

What made one human?

The body? Personality? Conscience?

Levi had arms, legs and eyes and spoke just like him and the noble qualities that humans praised themselves with seemed like mere ideas to some of them.

Love and kindness and mercy - Eren came from a place that valued these things, but he knew that people existed in this world, who were worse than animals.

Cruel and cold and heartless.

Looking at the corpses around him, he honestly couldn't tell _._

 _Humans could be monsters and monsters..._ His eyes snapped back to Levi at the thought. _Maybe monsters could be humane._

He bit his bottom lip and shook his head slowly, unable to answer the stranger and Levi nodded, watched him with a knowing grin that was unsettling, as if he saw right through Eren's every thought.

"I am not mortal.", murmured the small man eventually and the guard nodded in understanding. "And while I'm not dead, I don't know if there is life left in me. Probably doesn't matter though. There aren't many things that concern me these days."

The young servant furrowed his brows, not knowing how he was able to catch the sorrow in Levi's bottomless eyes but seeing it nevertheless.

Directing his lifeless expression at their surroundings, he released a humorless chuckle that had Eren's skin crawl and nodded in the direction of one of the corpses.

"But I guess old habits die hard."

The young guard didn't dare to ask what the habit was supposed to be - the life saving or the killing - and the strange being didn't seem to be willing to elaborate further on his words, so Eren decided to let it go and took a tentative step forward instead.

"Thank you. You saved my life."

It came easy over his lips, because he meant it. No matter how terrifying Levi looked at first glance, he hadn't shown any malice.

The small man chuckled lowly, his eyes still on Eren who tried to come closer like a frightened animal, because he didn't want to hold a conversation over several meters, no matter how much every sense in his body told him to stay away from the creature.

Apparently, he couldn't fool his savior though.

"You're scared of me."

Eren froze in his spot, eyes widening but there was no instinct in him to deny the statement out of politeness. He hadn't been raised to lie.

"I..."

Removing his arms from his chest, Levi looked down at his open palms, milky white skin turning into black, that covered his slim fingers. "Don't shit yourself. I get it."

There it was again, that flicker of sadness and Eren gulped and shut his eyes briefly, before he closed the remaining distance and reached out.

Maybe a stupid idea, that's what Mikasa and Armin and probably every other person in the whole wide world would tell him later, but Eren didn't think it through, because he rarely did. Just closed his hand around long, black fingers in a sudden impulse, led by the unreadable emotion he had seen in the pale face.

"It doesn't matter."

Levi stared down at his hand for a moment, that felt icy and dead against Eren's hot skin, before he lifted his gaze and the guard repeated his words more intently.

"It doesn't matter that you're different from me. I won't let it distract me from what is important. You've helped me and I'm grateful."

"Brave, aren't you?", murmured the small man. "And stupid."

Eren gulped but forced his eyes to stay glued at the dark orbs in front of him, not retracting the hand that held Levi's, as the strange being broke out into a toothy grin that didn't quite give away if he was simply amused, or about to devour the guard.

"I've heard that before.", he answered honestly, and black eyes narrowed slightly.

 _Amused_ , thought Eren. He was amused.

Levi pulled his cold hand away and turned around, surveying their surroundings before he looked back at Eren over his shoulder. "Have you been alone last night?"

He shook his head before he nodded and the only thing that gave away that the small man wasn't pleased with this kind of answer, was an arched eyebrow, rising high into his forehead.

"I mean... I was alone, but I was searching for someone so...", the young guard made a helpless gesture. "Technically there could have been someone else here."

He hoped so. Hoped, that the dead horse wasn't the harbinger for a dead comrade, but Levi erased the brightly burning flame of denial with a resolute shake of his head.

"No man would have survived. Your kind is courageous but you break easily."

He turned back to the guard and stepped closer, eyeing him with new curiosity and Eren felt himself shrink under the scrutiny, all his attention immediately drawn to the strange being, not leaving any room to mourn the certain death of his fallen brother.

"It was you then." A slim digit pressed between his collarbones and ran down his chest, before it stopped right in the middle of his torso and Levi splayed his fingers over Eren's smooth armor. "Who would have thought..."

The young man shivered, even if he couldn't directly feel the contact of the cold hand. Levi's close proximity alone left him trembling and the small man kept staring at the expanse underneath his fingers as if he was able to spot Eren's heart below leather, skin and muscle.

"Me...?", he muttered, and Levi nodded in turn, finally tearing his eyes away from Eren's core and looking up at him.

"You called me. Sorry to burst your bubble."

Huge green eyes went even wider and the guard felt how the blood drained from his face as he stared at the being with disbelief.

"No..."

It couldn't be, could it?

His arms stretched out before he could think better of it, shoving his fingers through black fabric, probably tearing it even more but Levi didn't stop him as Eren clawed frantically at his clothes before he revealed pale, smooth skin. Dull and lifeless just as the rest of him and in the middle of it...

"No..."

He bit his lip, sinking to his knees as he stared at the gaping gash in the center of Levi's chest, black and festering, dark spidery veins surrounding the wound under his skin, growing from the rim of the opening into his pectorals.

"No, no, no..."

It wasn't denial, that urged him to repeat those words, but heartbreak from the sight and he fisted the ends of Levi's tattered tunics as he lowered his head and cast his eyes to the ground, feeling tears prickle in their corners.

He was facing _his god_ and the sacrifice Leviathan had made for them - this was what it looked like.

Not green fields and everlasting summer, not soft chirping and gentle breezes and the warm rays of sunshine on the streets of Sina, but a wound so horrid, that it hadn't healed for hundreds of years.

He felt tears on his cheeks, hot before the cold air turned them into icy little trails and Levi snorted.

"What the hell are you crying for?"

"For... for you...", the young man looked up and the stranger, the god, _his_ god looked almost dumbfounded as he spoke.

"It... must be painful..." He had enough sense to let go of the black fabric, shuffling a few centimeters away and bowing lower but it only elicited another snort from the deity.

"The fuck are you doing? I'm not defrosting you again."

"But- "

"Shut up and get on your damn feet. You can start with the worshipping when you're not about to piss yourself every time you look at my face."

 

~~~

 

Leviathan was nothing like Eren had him expected to be. The deity didn't appear to be friendly but foul mouthed and easily annoyed and his appearance didn't quite help either to see the kind god he was supposed to be.

When he had roughly informed the young guard that he would lead him back to Sina and Eren had asked if he knew the way, he had answered that he had made it a habit to keep track of his body parts.

The servant didn't know what to say or do.

His instincts told him to run, his head told him to show his devotion and crawl by Levi's feet and his heart...

His heart couldn't seem to forget the images of a pale chest, ripped open to be filled by nothing but emptiness surrounded by decaying flesh.

He couldn't quite fathom why the sight had hurt him so deeply, had brought him to tears but even while he trailed the deity through the snow, he felt himself swallow heavily, whenever he conjured the memory of the abominable wound.

Levi had been fed up with his obedient antics quite quickly and told him to get the stick out of his ass and Eren had done his best to behave normal since then, walking through the cold in silence.

What did one talk about with a god he had prayed to all his life as well as all his ancestors before him?

Whatever the answer was, Eren didn't know it and while he had a million questions, he couldn't figure out which of them were appropriate or what a being like Levi would consider to be too stupid, too naive or too mundane to ask.

Their way back to Sina turned out to be a lot longer than the guard had expected, making him wonder if he had fled into the wrong direction in the previous night, as they were still walking through nothing but snow-covered forest when the sun had risen high over the sky.

The god seemed to guess his thoughts while Eren looked around more and more often, searching for the well-known border and he spoke for the first time in what must have been hours.

"They mislead you. Bend the shadows and the world around you."

Eren didn't exactly know what that meant but nodded, guessing that Levi was trying to tell him, that the feral beasts had relocated him with some unholy magic and he began to understand why the deity had been adamant that his comrade couldn't have made it.

"Can I, uh, ask you something?"

An affirmative grunt was the only answer he got and he licked his lips nervously, before he spoke again.

"Have you... uhm, always looked like this?"

Hearing a low sound that sounded suspiciously like a ' _Tch'_ , Eren hastily continued to speak, worried that he had upset the deity with his careless words.

"I mean no disrespect! Our legends say, that you lived among humans and I thought they would surely have been scared of you if you had looked like -"

He snapped his mouth shut and closed his eyes, realizing that his attempt to explain himself had only made things worse and he blindly bumped into something in the very next second, as Levi had come to a halt and Eren hadn't seen it coming.

Rushing a few steps backwards, he was about to stutter an apology for almost knocking the pale man over, when the god turned around and fixed his deep, black orbs on him.

"Just stop."

Eren did. Looked at the small figure with wide, uncertain eyes and the deity sighed, before he stared at the ground for a moment as if it would bear answers for him.

"I won't harm you. Stop falling all over yourself, it's pissing me off."

His heavy gulp was audible in the silence of the wintery forest and Levi groaned, before he almost spat his next words at Eren. "I won't harm you if you piss me off either!"

He threw his hands into the air, seemingly frustrated, before he turned back around and stalked off, leaving Eren to stare at his back before he finally kicked his legs into motion and rushed after him.

"I'm sorry!"

Levi's shoulders tensed with irritation as he kept walking and the young guard quickly elaborated on his words.

"No! I mean, for making this difficult! It's the first time I meet a god. _My_ god. You've done so much for us, for me, but you also seem... dangerous? I want to show my gratitude but I'm still pretty nervous!"

Another grunt reached his ears and Levi appeared somewhat placated, slowing his steps ever so slightly, even though Eren felt like an idiot for laying his insecurities out in the open.

Then again, honesty probably went a long way with a god.

"I didn't. Apparently losing organs isn't good for your complexion."

Eren frowned for a moment, not quite able to follow Levi's line of thought before it hit him, that the deity had answered his initial question and his response left his mouth before he could think better of it.

"Pretty sure most people have other things to worry about than their complexion if they lose a _heart_."

He bit his lip and chastised himself as soon as the words had slipped out.

Armin had told him a million times that he had to think before he spoke, but a lifetime of nagging was obviously not enough to get rid of his stupidity.

About to apologize once again, the young guard raised his brows in surprise when a low chuckle reached his ears and he saw the deity nod in amusement. "Wouldn't recommend it one way or the other."

 

~~~

 

By the time Eren saw the border in the distance, he had somewhat acclimatized to the presence of the deity and lost his permanent worries that he might upset the god and meet an early end. The more he behaved like himself, the more had Levi opened up and while the strange being didn't exactly seem eager to converse with him, he had answered his questions and explained himself, whenever Eren asked him something.

Levi's hands were black, because they were stained with his own blood. Tearing a heart from a divine body was a sacrilege that would forever taint the person who did it and left traces that couldn't be washed away - even if the god himself had committed the act.

He had come to help Eren, had heard him, because of the fierce intent in his prayer. The god told him that words were shallow and didn't matter as much as the motives behind them and when the young guard had asked if Leviathan was able to hear their prayers, he had affirmed it, had said it was one of the things that kept him alive and how he sometimes wished the people would stop and let him go.

Hearing those words hurt almost as much as the sight of Levi's chest and it had taken the guard a while to muster up the courage to ask about it but the deity didn't seem surprised.

Eren was as much a part of the god as every leaf and every drop of water in Sina. He had been born in the land that was brimming with Levi's essence, had breathed the air and eaten the fruits that the ground bore and all of it had been filled with the divine power of Levi's heart.

The people in Sina would always be connected to him, even if they stopped believing, stopped praying his name.

A piece of Leviathan lived in all of them.

It was then, that Eren understood his own fears, the reason why the strange being had put him off, had scared him so much.

Levi was by no means an alluring sight with his black eyes and his lifeless expression, the greasy hair and skin so pale and thin, that the guard could spot almost every vein beneath it, but he wasn't hideous either.

Just like Eren could sense the phantom pain of Leviathan's heart and hurt from the sheer view of the wound, he also felt traces of Levi's self-rejection.

A part of the god hated himself for what he had done, and it left the guard with a deep feeling of guilt, knowing that all their riches had been built on the back of a sacrifice that seemed to eat away on the deity in more ways than one.

Levi's presence had kept him warm throughout the woods, despite the cold, despite his thin garments, despite the gods outward appearance that made him look like a deathly, icy being.

Hours upon hours of wandering through the forest, avoiding low hanging branches, their feet crunching in the snow and slipping on patches of frozen water and all he felt was the warm buzz that had filled his body ever since the deity had touched him.

When he finally stepped through the last line of trees and sensed the warm afternoon air that ruffled his hair gently, he felt like he could breathe again after an eternity of being submerged under water and his eyes closed for a moment as the familiar sound of birds in the sky and bees idly flying from flower to flower reached his ears.

It was only when he opened them again, that he realized he was alone.

He turned around, watching Leviathan who stood at the border of his own realm without entering and frowned deeply.

"Aren't you coming?"

The deity hummed lowly, black orbs gazing over the fields in front of him before his eyes wandered back to Eren.

"It has been a long time. There is nothing here for me."

"Your heart is here!", blurted the guard and stepped back towards the small man. "Your people! You're our god, no matter how you look, no matter if you are... incomplete! It was only yesterday that we celebrated your name and prayed for your guidance!"

Levi showed another of those weird, unsettling smiles and shook his head slowly. "I don't know Eren..."

"I don't care!"

He grabbed Levi's hand and pulled him along, the gods expression surprised and startled as he stumbled over the border but Eren felt that he truly didn't bother.

It had been hundreds, more than a thousand years since their deity had put a foot onto their ground and now that he was here, had saved his life, he wanted to leave without giving his own children a chance to see him?

Eren didn't care why Leviathan didn't want to step on the earth that carried his heart. He only knew that this was his home, his realm and he was meant to be here with his folk. His insecurities and self-hatred had no place here and the guard was going to show him just how much he had done for them and what he meant to the people of Sina.

He didn't make it far though, as the deity slumped to the ground as soon as he crossed the border, hands bracing himself on the small patch of grass in front of the field as his black eyes widened and he gasped and panted deeply.

It was impossible to miss how reconnecting with a part of himself had an immediate effect on Levi and while Eren was slightly worried, it also pleased him immensely to watch how the softest hint of life returned to Levi's features.

Still pale, still tattered and haggard and horribly dirty, but the man looked different now as a new glint sparked in his black orbs and his dull skin was suddenly luminous as if it reflected the faintest trace of silvery moonlight.

The lunar companion of the night wasn't to be seen though, only the sun and Levi himself and the young guard smiled while he continued to hold Levi's wrist and stared into the blackness of his eyes.

Eyes that narrowed now, as the god gathered his bearings, and filled with something angered and dangerous before he ripped his hand away and cursed.

"Hell!! What have you _done_?!"

Eren flinched away, eyes widening in surprise as he remembered who exactly he was dealing with.

"I'm sorry, I thought... Don't you belong here?"

He went to his knees, face pleading while he reached out for the god and took his hand in a gentle hold.

The deity scoffed, ripping his wrist away yet again. "And why would I? They broke my heart, so I thought they might as well have it!"

Stunned into silence, the guard gaped at him for a few seconds, before he looked to the ground, having nothing to say.

The only sound around them was the constant buzzing of insects in the warm afternoon air but Eren felt suddenly cold as his bottom lip began to tremble.

He had been raised to believe that Leviathan had sacrificed himself for them, but the god seemed to feel different, didn't seem to want anything to do with them at all.

Was this how it was? Had the divine being given them his heart because he had wanted to be rid of it?

Looking up again, he felt a hot trickle of tears dripping down on his cheek and Eren bit into his cheek, frustrated with his childish outbursts.

If only he was more mature, more like the elder or Mike, he wouldn't have dragged Levi over the border or started crying as soon as the deity disapproved of his actions.

Leviathan sighed softly, before he crouched closer and reached out.

Eren was so caught up in his emotions, he didn't even recoil from the touch of a cold hand that cupped his cheek before the small man apologized.

"Forgive me... I..."

The deity frowned and cocked his head slightly, searching for words while he stared into Eren's wide eyes.

"I didn't mean to say that, it came out wrong."

"But...", the guard hiccupped and closed his eyes as Levi's black thumb caressed his face. "But you don't want to be here?"

"I do.", retracting his hand, his expression contorted into something thoughtful. "I am old, but not without flaws. There are things that scare even me."

The god offered his open palm and Eren took his hand without a second thought.

"You know it too, don't you? You're young, barely an adult, still half a child, living a life of peace without a care in the world...", Levi chuckled when Eren's face twisted into an angry pout. "...but I know you understands what it means to let go of your heart."

The young man nodded and licked his lips, before his whisper rose between them. "It means... to die."

Levi hummed and squeezed his hand gently and Eren found that for the first time since he had met the deity, he didn't feel any animosity towards him.

"I am not who I was and I'm afraid I can not be what your people want me to be. This version of me... it died."

"You don't- It's not- ", he groaned in frustration, not finding the words but Levi grinned at him and the young man wondered again, if the deity could see his every thought and emotion.

He couldn't tell why it was but in the gods presence, he felt his years or rather their lack even more vigorously. It was clear to him that he was young, but he knew that his people considered him to be an adult, leading a respectable life as a servant of Sina.

Next to the deity, he was like a child. Insecure and emotional and unable to voice his thoughts with the heavy knowledge of Levi's immense lifespan, wisdom and power weighing him down even further.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to ground himself, trying to find the words that would get through to a being so old, so otherworldly, that his name was whispered solemnly in their greatest legends.

A being that had admitted to him that he was just as scarred, just as insecure as the people who lived their lives in the blink of an eye for him.

"You are my god, Leviathan. That is who you are, who you will always be. My savior, my guide through the darkness. Look around.", he gestured to the wide, open fields, the blue sky above them, filled with white, fluffy clouds. "This is your work. You think we can't see through your shell to know who you are, when you have given us everything?"

He nodded to himself and held on tightly to the slim, black fingers. "You belong here and...", the guard swallowed heavily, before he fixed his green eyes on the deity. "...and I don't believe that you offered us your heart out of selfish reasons. I want you to see what it means to us."

Another sigh whispered through the air and Eren could tell that Levi's resistance crumbled. His god was lonely, it was easy to see, and the servant didn't want to live another day knowing, that the being that gifted prosperity and peace to them was suffering in solitude and self-hatred.

In a time of need, Leviathan had answered his prayers and saved him from certain death and Eren would repay him for his kindness as best as he could.

Lifting the slim hand, he breathed a soft kiss to Leviathan's knuckles and looked at the tattered creature, whose magic was still humming through his every bone, filling him with the very essence of life.

"I see it, you know?"

The god furrowed his brows as Eren spoke and the young servant flashed him a smile.

"Everything you have done for us, for me... It makes you beautiful. It is strange and different, but I can see what you truly are and I know that you're lonely."

Leviathan stared at him for a moment, before black orbs darted away and looked at the ground, seemingly caught off guard and Eren couldn't tell if the slight warmth he was feeling in Levi's fingers was his own, slowly seeping through his black skin, or if something inside of the god had come alive.

He didn't have any time to dwell on it, when Levi's eyes snapped to the horizon and his face morphed into something unpleasant and _vulnerable_.

Turning around with a curious look, it took a short while until Eren could hear the trampling of hoofs in the distance and saw the dust that rose from a small group of riders heading their way straight through the corn.

"They must have seen us from the towers...", he turned around and nodded with an expression he hoped to be encouraging, while he recited a line from their prayer with a playful lilt. "Your children await, Levi. I beg you... please meet them."


	3. Coming Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A difficult chapter to write if I might say so, not only because I was getting a little worried that it might be too drawn out and boring, but also because I felt that the depiction of Levi not feeling anything and him obviously reacting emotionally here and there made things confusing, which is why I rewrote great parts and tried to clear it up a bit.  
> Besides that, I tried to write the part from Levi's perspective a little different, as he is an ancient god, not a brash teenager and I hope that it shows and that the mood is a little different :)
> 
> The chapters are getting longer and the ideas for this fic in my head are getting out of hand, so this might very well turn out to be huge despite my naive statement in the first chapter, that I don't plan this to be long. My mind is full of epic moments, twists and turns and several parallel storylines. This could become my biggest fiction ever and I hope that's a good thing for everyone who likes this fic, hehe. Let's keep our fingers crossed that I actually manage to write some 200k word monster without losing it at some point.  
> Thank you for your support and your sweet comments so far. I hope you will enjoy this chapter and would be happy to read your thoughts :3

The deity was still standing by his side when the approaching horses came to a fast halt, that had dirt and pieces of grass flying through the air and Eren considered it a temporary victory.

Leviathan didn’t shy from glaring at the new arrivals and the young guard couldn’t contain his smile as he looked at the man, his posture regal despite his small height and his head held high, not letting Eren forget for a single second who he was.

A god.

An ancient being with the power to crush them under his palms, who had shown him mercy in his moment of need.

Then again, it seemed as if Eren was alone with these thoughts, considering how his fellow servants stared down at them, caution visible in their expressions, though their attention was solely focused on the young guard. They were open and trusting like this – rather wondering were their second comrade had ended up, than scrutinizing the new arrival.

“Eren…?”

He stepped forward and lifted his closed fist to his heart in means of greeting, returned by the three guards as if on autopilot and he couldn’t suppress the chuckle that rose from his chest when Levi snorted as soon as one of them uttered a ‘Leviathan guides’.

“We found your horse this morning.”

Marco lifted himself from the saddle and hit the ground on solid feet, ignoring Eren’s apparent amusement, before Krista and Berthold followed his example. The lingering worry edged into their features was obvious as much as the relief to have one of their own back and the young man felt how the light mood he had been filled with only seconds ago, bled from his body, as he dreaded to reveal all the encounters he had faced in the last hours.

Finding the corpse of a horse.  
Shadows hunting him in the darkness.  
Looking into the eyes of his god.  
  


“I followed a guard into the forest.”

Three pairs of eyes widened and Eren shook his head slowly, teeth sinking into his bottom lip, before he stared at the ground. “Whoever was supposed to man the border after me… He’s dead.”

“Dead? How– Did you find him?”

“No but…”, he cast a quick glance at Levi, the deity as calm as ever but his comrades didn’t follow, just kept looking at Eren with a mix of pain and confusion. “I found his horse. It was…”, he drew a shaky breath as he conjured the images of the mauled body in his mind. “It’s hard to explain. It was torn apart, but not by animals. There were beasts made from shadows chasing me through the trees.”

Krista gasped and raised a hand to cover her mouth in shock, while Berthold and Marco frowned rather disbelieving and shot each other quick, doubtful looks, that Eren didn’t manage to decipher right away until Marco cleared his throat and asked hesitantly. “Shadows…? Are you sure?”

It was the young guards turn to furrow his brows, eyes darting back and forth between his comrades as realization dawned on him. “What do you mean? Of course I’m sure!”

Still looking from one to the other, Eren clenched his fists when they didn’t respond, taken aback by the mere idea that the guards thought he would make the horrible happenings of the last night up out of thin air.

What would he gain from lying? Or did they think he had been hallucinating, trapped by the cold and the fear in his guts? He was a servant of the temple just as much as them, had begun his duty together with the other guards, had always done his work, had left the border to search for one of their own while the rest of them had fattened their bellies and drunk honey wine during the celebrations and after everything he had lived through last night, they dared to look at him as if he was a child with a too vivid imagination.

Eren was about to spit a reply at the freckled young man, when another snort snapped him out of his forming anger.

“Hilarious, aren’t they?” Four pairs of eyes landed on Levi, and only now did three of them widen as they fully took his appearance in, wandered over his tattered clothes, spotted his black hands and eyeballs and the deadly paleness of his skin, but the small man didn’t seem fazed. “Live in a magical bubble of endless summer but don’t believe that the shadows can harm you.”

The young guard huffed with faint amusement, his brewing outrage suddenly silenced by the snarky comment of the deity and nodded. The absolute lack of emotion in Leviathan’s voice only served to emphasize the ridiculousness he was pointing out, his blank face making it seem as if he was talking to a group of complete nitwits.

He inhaled deeply, willing the indignation down that had settled in his mind, to be levelheaded when he resumed the discussion with his comrades, but before he could even start to utter another word, he felt a strong hand grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him backwards in the next second, causing him to land on his rear between the other servants when he lost his footing.

“Marco, what the hell are you doing?”

“Did you see his eyes?! He’s a demon! Why the hell did you bring him here??”

“He saved my life! He’s not– “

“Oh for fucks sake…” Levi didn’t even wait for their quarrel to gain momentum, just closed what little distance was between them – which had the three guards instantly jumping away from Eren – and looked down at the young man. “Let’s go.”

“But…”

“What, you think these baby faces are going to stop _me_?”, a dry laugh void of any amusement fell from Levi’s lips. “Sure, and the sun is rising in the west. Get your ass up, we’re leaving.”

“Ah, yeah, sure.” Eren scrambled to his feet hastily and patted the soft leather of his pants to rid them from the dust, before he got pushed aside _again_.

“Step away from him, demon!”

It was pathetic, really. Berthold was practically shaking after maneuvering himself between Eren and what seemed to be a positively annoyed Levi and the young guard watched how Marco neared the deity from the back, probably trying to take him down while the other servant had his attention.

Leviathan’s eyes found Eren’s, reading the unspoken warning and a brow rose lazily in his pale face the moment Marco jumped at him, before a loud thumb echoed through the air.

The guard practically bounced back from the small frame of the deity as he tried to knock him over, not disturbing a single, greasy hair on the god’s head and planting his ass in the dirt seconds later.

Levi stood like a brick wall, turning his head over his shoulder and cocking an eyebrow yet again while maintaining his bored expression. “And what exactly do you think you’re doing?”

Eren couldn’t stop the giggle that bubbled from his throat. The strange being must have terrified his friends, but now that he didn’t let himself be blinded by his creepy appearance any longer, the young servant found that Levi seemed mischievous, almost playful and not threatening at all in his actions.

Be it an act or simply the god’s absolute indifference to the guards attempt to take him down, displayed by his bored posture and voice, it removed the last traces of discomfort towards the small man in Eren’s heart.

“Leviathan will punish you!”

The deity turned back to Berthold and grinned that creepy smirk of his, that didn’t quite appear as if he knew how a smile was supposed to look like. “I can guarantee you that Leviathan doesn’t give a flying fuck. Now, I heard that it is frowned upon when parents beat their children, but I assure you that I’ll hand your ass to you in pieces if you don’t get out of my way right the fuck now.”

Another step forward and Berthold practically leaped out of Levi’s way, completely ignoring his strange statement.

The small man eyed Eren for a moment and shook his head, before he took off with a murmur on his pale lips. “Why am I even keeping up with this shit? You owe me, brat.”

“Whatever you wish.”, chuckled the young guard and turned around to walk behind the deity, when Levi had passed him by to follow the path that the horses had cleared through the open field.

“Wait!”

The god groaned in response to Krista’s timid voice but stopped nevertheless and twisted his upper body to cast a look on the girl.

The young woman swallowed heavily, her eyes darting away from Levi and back to his face several times as if she couldn’t decide weather to openly stare at the man or be too afraid to throw a single glance at him.

“T-Take my horse…”

A slim, back eyebrow rose above one of Levi’s dark orbs that examined the female guard for a few, tense moments filled with silence – Eren began to think that the thin lines of hair were the only expressive feature in Leviathan’s face, while the rest of it never seemed to change or give anything away – before he shook his head and raised one of his hands to beckon her closer.

“Come here.”

Krista followed the command immediately under heavy protest of Marco and Berthold and Eren felt himself blush when she came to a halt in front of the deity and Levi repeated the same inspection he had subjected the young guard to in the woods.

His black fingers landed firmly in the middle of her still forming bust, pressing into the soft leather between her breasts and the woman closed her eyes bashfully, while Levi stared at her torso.

“You’re coming with us.”

His palm fell away from her body and she gazed up at him in confusion but nodded finally and Leviathan turned around without another word, before he set off through the golden field of crops, gently swishing in the afternoon breeze.

 

~~~

 

Levi might not have invited Berthold and Marco to join them, but they obviously followed closely, trailing them through the fields as the small group wandered towards the village in the glow of the afternoon sun.

Two thirds into their journey, Marco steered his horse closer, next to Krista who was silently guiding her own steed on its rein, walking despite the willing mount that moved beside her and Eren could easily guess what he was planning to do, when the young man bent down, whispering something to the blonde servant.

“He wants to warn the temple guards…”

The deity chuckled and Eren watched Krista from the corner of his eyes, a short nod being her only response, before Marco dug his heels into the sides of his horse and took off, pushing it into a fast gallop.

“Is that so? Are you worried, Eren?”

“I am.”

Levi hummed, and the brunette considered it to be his only response, before the small man cocked his head, watching the departing guard from behind.

“About what?”

Sighing, he shrugged, guessing that fear wasn’t a familiar sensation to the god, considering the powers that lived inside of him, or maybe it just wasn’t something he concerned himself with anymore, ever since his heart had been lost to him.

In all likelihood, Leviathan might not even care if he reached the village, only to be threatened by the soldiers there, accused to be a demon but then again, Eren didn’t know just what exactly the small man felt, if anything at all.

What did it mean to have no heart? Was Levi indifferent to the world? To himself?

The young man wasn’t so sure, remembering the deity’s outburst when he had been dragged over the border and while he guessed that a heart that wasn’t there couldn’t hurt, the sheer thought that their beloved god would be treated like a monster upon entering the village, had his guts clenching anxiously.

“About you.”

Leviathan’s head turned in his direction, a slow, measured movement, before he looked at Eren with black orbs that seemed to see everything and only when the young man freed himself from the hypnotic gaze, did he realize what lay within the god’s pale expression.

The being didn’t answer him and still, Eren felt with certainty, that the faintest twitch of his lips in an unmoving face, pressing them together ever so slightly without turning them into a harsh line, meant, that nobody had told him these words in a long, long time.

“I worry about you.”, he repeated, and Levi finally acknowledged it with a slow nod, before he turned his head back, eyes fixed on the distant rider and opened his mouth.

And he _sang_.

A sound so eerie but beautiful, somehow haunting and lonely but deeply touching as well and Eren felt all too son, that he had started to hold his breath.

In front of them, a good three hundred meters away by now, the horse came to a halt, turned slowly and trotted back to them, no matter the efforts Marco put into guiding it on the path he had intended to take.

Berthold passed them by on his mare shortly after, most likely wanting to check on his fellow guard but he didn’t make it far, before his own horse stopped just as gently as Marco’s and turned around, walking back to the small group, as Levi kept humming his otherworldly melody.

Raising a hand, the god patted the soft nose of the animal with tender affection, before the steed resumed his place behind the group, walking slowly under the guards wide, surprised eyes.

“How is he doing that?”, whispered Krista and Eren shrugged.

“I don’t know.”, he turned his head to her and smiled, filled with relief, not only because the looming disaster had been prevented, but because the deity hadn’t just dismissed his worries without a second thought but eased them instead and Eren wondered how many more times Levi would come to the rescue for him.

While the god probably didn’t deem it necessary to stop the rider for his own sake, he had done so to soothe Eren’s mind, only cementing the feeling that Leviathan was indeed a guide through the darkness for him, just as he had believed for so many years.

He raised his voice louder, making sure that Berthold and even Marco who had come considerably closer to them again, could hear it. “But what I _do_ know, is that animals _despise_ demons.”

The young woman nodded, lowering her eyes to her feet as they kept trudging forward, before she answered, still careful to keep her voice low so Levi couldn’t hear her, but Eren had no doubt he sensed every word clearly despite her efforts.

“I know he’s not a demon, but…”

He slowed down, let himself fall back slightly in order to stop craning his neck and gave her an encouraging nod. “But?”

“Well… something is wrong with him.”

Eren sighed, not even trying to argue with her. Despite knowing that Levi was their praised god, he was aware that she had hit the nail on the head.

Something _was_ wrong with the deity, more specifically the deep hole in his chest that ate away on his body and his soul, but the young guard wasn’t sure if it was his story to tell and their earlier conversation – despite his doubts about the truth in Levi’s harsh words – had shown him that there were parts missing in their legends.

There was no wisdom, no experience needed to tell that the god hurt.

His appearance, his demeanor, everything about him showed how deeply twisted his existence was but Eren didn’t think for a single second, that there was true cruelty inside of him after all the acts of kindness he had witnessed from the small man.

His support, his behavior when the guards had attacked him, his tender caress of a horse’s snout – it all shone a light on who Levi truly was, had once been.

“He is… broken.”

Krista’s eyes narrowed with sympathy, before her gaze wandered to the small man in front of them, walking slowly, still humming his gentle tune and her lips pressed into a thin line, her expression grave when she turned to Eren again.

“Who is he?”

The young guard shrugged, unsure how to break the truth to his companion, uncertain if Levi was willing to even share it with anyone but him, but when he examined Krista’s face closer as he thought about his next words, he saw the sad glint in her eyes and understood.

She knew.

She knew, and she asked him to prove her wrong, to deny it. To tell her, that the being clad in darkness was a stranger, a loner, a wanderer, not a deity they had been praying to all their lives.

The saddest thing though, was that he could. That he knew, confirmed by Leviathan himself, that the person in front of them wasn’t the very man who had once sacrificed himself for their sake.

Not anymore.

Eren had caught glimpses of Levi’s true personality already, considered him to be caring to some extent, despite hiding it behind gruff words or nonchalance, but it couldn’t change the fact, that he had lost a vital part of his body and soul and in the process, probably himself.

He shook his head, refusing to answer her question and the young woman cast her eyes away, as they kept walking through the golden fields, the warm afternoon sun in their backs and the forlorn sound of Levi’s tune in their ears.

 

~~~

 

That the village hadn’t been informed of the incoming arrival of the so-called demon, didn’t change the fact that a little crowd was waiting for them when they neared the first buildings.

Sina was small and people knew about the disappearance of two of the temple guards by now, expecting them to return as the occupants of the watchtower had spotted the exact same number of persons at the distant border.

Eren saw Mikasa, Armin and his mother among the waiting folk, as well as the raven girls strong hand on his best friends arm when he wanted to fling himself at the returning guard, her watchful eye never leaving the stranger that entered the settlement instead of one of their own.

The distrust and reluctance he witnessed in his people’s eyes surprised him and didn’t at the same time. They were known to be of kind heart, able to look past the things that might deter the eye from what truly mattered, tending to the crippled, deformed and hideous all the same as to everyone else but Levi was something even they had never seen.

The young guard himself had felt the dread in his guts when he first spotted the deity and he didn’t fault his kind for their difficulties to deal with him, but he didn’t doubt that they too would soon feel the deep connection they all carried with the small man.

Leviathan raised his head and looked up to him, when he placed a careful hand on his shoulder, displaying his companionship and trust to his people and he cast a questioning look at the god, silently asking for permission and receiving a short nod in return.

“I bring sad news.”

Eren didn’t need to raise his voice, as the small crowd fell silent immediately as soon as he had opened his mouth.

“One of our own has fallen in the forest beyond the border.”

It was consoling to witness how mourning voices rose among the people, their eyes widened in sudden sorrow, women raising their hands to cover their mouths gaping in shock and not a single one of them staring at the dark being next to him any longer.

“But as we know…”, he swallowed, forcing a sad smile on his lips. “…Leviathan has always gifted us plenty in return for our sacrifices.”

The small man cast his dark orbs to the ground, a frown spreading on his forehead while the first voices mumbled a humble ‘ _Leviathan guides_ ’ that was soon picked up by all of them and echoed solemnly in the face of their tragic loss.

“And when I was alone and lost in the dark, facing my end, he answered my prayers...”

Eren found his mother’s eyes among the people, a gentle smile spreading on her lips, before he stepped behind the deity, his hands landing on his shoulders, feeling the stiffness in Levi’s body, but gently pushing him a step forward to emphasize his words. “… by himself.”

The silence that washed over the people was deafening, the sound of the chipper birds in the sky and the wind in the trees almost bizarre in its stark contrast, before a cacophony of voices erupted all at once, some of the inhabitants falling to their knees, bowing their head as others spat profanities or outright cried as if in agony.

The young guard closed his eyes for a moment, drawing a deep breath to ground himself, as his hands fell away from Leviathan’s body.

He had expected some disbelief, had imagined his peers to harbor doubts but the way they positively jumped at each other’s throats now had him lost and Levi’s already rigid form grew more tense with every passing second as they watched friends insult each other, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers shouting into the faces of their loved ones.

The god had warned him, had he not? Had told, him that he wasn’t what these people wanted and needed any longer and the young guard had disregarded it carelessly, believing that the inhabitants of Sina would be overjoyed after overcoming some initial trouble. Delighted, to welcome their deity in their midst.

Now he could only watch as the commotion grew, friends and neighbors either showing righteous outrage for the disrespectful behavior towards their deity or cursing him with pointed fingers, accusing him to be the source of all evil in this world and calling Eren a liar for his sacrilegious claims.

His heart clenched when he spotted Armin and Mikasa in the middle of it all, the girl still closing her hand around the young mans arm in an iron grip, shaking him while she let a myriad of fast, harsh words hail down on him, the blonde head shaking weakly in response.

This was truly not, what he had imagined.

Eren stepped forward, coming shoulder to shoulder with the small man, who had cast his black orbs to the ground, pale lips pressed into a thin line and the young guard knew in this moment, that Levi could indeed feel _something_.

This wasn’t right. Leviathan had given them everything, had made them who they were today, and he opened his mouth with a sharp intake of breath, to reprimand his people, to shame them for their blasphemy, but a booming voice interrupted the growing outbursts, bellowing through the crowd, before he could address his own kind once more.

“ _SILENCE!_ ”

Eren’s eyes snapped to his mother, who had stepped forward, a stern expression on her face when she walked the few meters to stand next to them, before she reached for Levi’s hand and held it gently, the god’s eyes widening at her fearless approach.

“A life debt can never be forgotten. Who saves my blood becomes my blood. So is the law.”

“Mother…”

She shot a furious look at the people in front of her, who had started to point fingers as insults rose towards her and huffed. “What, you really think you can stop him from entering the village?”

Her glare only darkened further, before anyone could even start to respond, and she repeated the very words she had once said to Eren when he had been summoned by the temple to start his education.

“You foolish lot! You all think the world is built on kindness! It isn’t!”, her hand wildly gestured at the small man as her voice rose in anger, as if she had already pieced everything together and seen the hole in his chest with her own eyes. “This! This is what true sacrifice looks like! Nothing in this world is free and everything of meaning has a hefty price! How dare you question him after everything he has given us?! After he saved my _son_?! Are you so blind that you can’t see him for what he is?!?”

The small deity turned his head to Eren, his face inquiring but the young guard only shrugged his shoulders, knowing that not even a god would be a match for the fierce lioness that was his mother.

She whipped her head around, her posture and expression immediately tender and devoted without submission, only filled with the gentle love of a mother and the guard had never felt as grateful as in this moment, that she never doubted him and always seemed to _know_.

“Come with me Leviathan. My house is humble, but it shall be your home now, if you so wish.”

“Carla!”

Her brows drew together, and her head whipped around, when the crowd parted for the eldest, before the old man came to a halt in front of them and her eyes narrowed, voice lowered, only for the four of them to hear.

“You can protest all you want, but he is coming with me. Try stopping me.”

Eren couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her fiery declaration, proudly straightening his shoulders when he looked at the deity again.

“That’s my mother for you.”

Carla grinned upon her son’s words, her free hand coming to rest on Levi’s hair, uncaring of the grime and grease in it and she gave his fingers, still caught in her grip, a friendly squeeze.

“Don’t fault them for their naivety, Leviathan. They’re like a flock of sheep, that has been lazing in the sun for so long, that they mistake the herd dog for a wolf.”

 

~~~

 

Carla was a force of nature, filled with determination, passion and love.

Levi didn’t need to touch her to see the burning heart she carried like a shining beacon, guiding and warming everyone and everything that crossed her path and the deity thought, that Eren might very well hold the same brightness one day. Her fierce love had certainly laid the foundations for it.

It had been people like her, that once tempted him to step into the realm of men.

Where his brethren saw nothing but flaws and selfishness, Levi had known that there was more to them than met the eye, some of them hiding more good inside their fragile bodies, than he had ever seen in any god or spiritual being.

Who he was, didn’t faze her, instead he received the same motherly attention as all people in her life – the good as well as the bad – and Levi didn’t mind it, although it managed to amuse the him in a twisted, deformed way.

A real smile and genuine delight just weren’t part of his emotional repertoire anymore.

So when she fixed her son with a stern look, telling him to follow them home, despite Eren pointing out that he couldn’t leave his duty and lived in the temples now, Levi wasn’t surprised that she didn’t falter.

Instead, she just crossed her arms and years of conditioning forced the young guard to bend to her will immediately, only to receive the softest smile in the world from her in return.

When she turned around, the crowd parted for her – not for the deity – and she stepped through the people with her head held high as if the woman herself had been born with the spark of light that lived in all beings of the heavens, but Levi knew, that she was only human.

Feeble and defenseless, gone in the blink of an eye, aging and withering away like flowers in the meadows at the end of the season and the small man almost mourned the loss of another beautiful heart, despite her walking in front of him alive and well.

The world was cruel like this – even deities longed for the things they could no longer have and everything of true value wasn’t made to last.

Levi could do nothing but watch as perfection was born into this world, only to shatter and break all to soon, again and again and _again_.

  
He didn’t recognize the place he had once lived in anymore.

Where small huts made of clay and hay had lined thin, sandy trails in the past, he looked at multistoried timber houses crowned by red roof tiles now, adorned with smokestacks made of brick, releasing lazily curling smolder into the clear evening air.

Posts with flags and hanging flowerpots rose along the cobbled street – a testament to the celebrations on the previous day – and chicken and sparrows dotted the way ahead of them, picking out seeds and breadcrumbs between the stones.

The god wondered, if he would feel the bittersweet tinge of disappointment if his condition was different, as he watched mothers usher their playing children away, firmly closing doors and shutters in their face.

Probably, he decided.  


They entered a small, two storied house, leaning heavily against the neighboring structure through a heavy door soon after and Carla placed the small man on a simple chair, asking him unceremoniously if the likes of him required food or sleep, when she had ushered her son away with cryptic instructions.

Despite him shaking his head, she stoked the fire under the stove until the flames crackled and warmed the already heated house even more.

Never-ending summer and lighted fireplaces didn’t mesh well, he supposed.

What she was doing only dawned on him, when Eren hoisted the first heavy buckets of water through the small doorframe in the back of the kitchen and filled a wide kettle, before he made his way out of the house again, carrying the next load up the stairs and repeating the process several times as the liquid on the stove began to bubble.

Carla was the one lifting the cauldron from the open flames eventually, a thick piece of cloth around the metal handle to shield her hands from the scorching heat, before she proceeded to walk up the stairs and beckoned him to follow.

Levi looked down on himself and stood, examining his tattered clothes.

It had been a while since he last worried about the cleanliness and appearance of his body and it wasn’t in him any longer to feel self-conscious about his personal hygiene – probably never had been, as mundane as the topic was – but surveying the situation, he supposed he must look to the mortals like a battered crow after taking a swim in a muddy puddle.

 _Bizarre_ , he thought.

After eons of living through earth-shattering wars, sorrow and loneliness, never able to truly escape the conflicts between those of his kind or to forget the great losses and sacrifices his existence had brought upon him and those around the deity, he stood in front of a winding staircase in a tiny house.

To bathe.

The sole reason being a boy, a _baby_ in Levi’s eyes, who looked up from a wooden tub when the god had followed Carla to the second floor into a tiny room.

Eren’s eyes wandered back to the basin and he stretched a careful hand into the water, as soon as his mother had added the hot liquid from the cauldron, before he decided to fill the contents of another – supposedly cold – bucket into the tub.

He could have told him, that the temperature didn’t matter, that his lifeless, decaying body wouldn’t know the difference, or that the water wouldn’t do him any harm, even if it was scalding or almost freezing.

Instead, he stayed rooted in place at the entrance of the small bath, watching as the humans continued their preparations with learned practice and an eye for detail that was lost on the likes of him.

Even when he had first entered their lands, he had found satisfaction in observing them. The way they did almost everything with purpose and care, while their childlike curiosity and sense of wonder never wore off, treasuring the beauty around them.

Levi had pondered about it many times, asking himself if their short lifespan was responsible for these characteristics. If he had simply turned blind to what was right in front of him, after an eternity of staring at the same world, the same recurring conflicts and tragedies, the same sun rising every day, leaving the shadows of the night behind, only to disappear in the evenings again, indifferent to anything it had casted its light upon.

Whatever the reason was, these small actions stood out to him, the fact that they strove to give meaning to their lives and everything they did was a small, single step on the way to achieving their goals.

The current goal, being cleaning their deity.

It may have drawn a low chuckle from his lips in the past.

Now, his black orbs followed Carlas movements instead, while she piled several sheets of clean linen on the small surface of a wooden cabinet, before she turned around with a face that was almost predatory, despite her smile, telling him that she wouldn’t accept refusal.

“Eren will bathe you.”

He might as well please her and the small woman looked satisfied when he didn’t talk back, before she left the room and closed the door behind herself, leaving the god with the boy he had come to rescue in the previous night.

“It’s weird…”, murmured the guard, inclining Levi to cock his head slightly, wordlessly waiting for the young servant to elaborate.

A curious thing, really, how humans always felt the urge to fill spaces with chatter and kept talking and talking, revealing more and more if only one let them steer in silence long enough.

Eren, the god had already learned, was especially impatient.

“You stared at her all the time.”

Ah, mortals – their strong bonds with their own kin was another notion he couldn’t share as his own brethren never seized their battles for power. Still, it somehow kept balance in a menacing, devastating way.

“She’s beautiful.”

The boy glared at him for a moment, before he seemed to remind himself that the person in front of him was his god, meant to be worshipped and cherished and Levi didn’t make an effort to explain, that it wasn’t her face or her body – already starting to waste away with the flow of time – that had him look at her.

It was the heart, the only thing left in this world he could truly appreciate, just as humans praised flowers and the golden light of the evening sun.

“So are you.”, he said instead and while the crease between Eren’s brows didn’t vanish, it was one of surprise and confusion now, before he shook his head and reached for a bottle to trickle a thin stream of scented oil into the steaming tub.

“We should rinse your skin first”, was the next thing leaving his mouth instead of a retort and he left his place next to the bath and reached out when he stood in front of Levi, grabbing for his garments with hesitant fingers and an uncertain expression.

The god didn’t move.

It had been a long time, but he still remembered the days when the humans had tended to him like servants and while he didn’t look down on them, it wasn’t below him to indulge.

Now, it was only memories, as the attention didn’t manage to stir a real feeling inside of his empty chest, but he hadn’t forgotten who he was, and even though he didn’t think himself to be arrogant, he was well aware of the insignificance of Eren’s existence, compared to his own.

The boy fumbled with the pathetic remains of his tunic for a moment, before he removed them and swallowed heavily as his eyes fell on Levi’s chest and the god couldn’t fault him for his reaction, knowing how gruesome the sight was.

When the young guard kneeled down, his black orbs followed, watching trembling hands reaching for his pants, before the fabric was peeled off of him and the young man averted his eyes bashfully and while Levi didn’t conjure the same emotions anymore – hadn’t in a long time –, he could remember what the faint tinge of red in Eren’s cheeks and a pink tongue nervously wetting his lips, meant.

He wasn’t so blind to the world, that he couldn’t understand why all the bravado was gone, now that the woods and fields lay behind them, exchanged for a small room filled with steam, their bodies so close that it was almost intimate.

It didn’t seem to be in Eren’s nature to bow and shy away from him, even if he had made a pathetic attempt to kneel in front of the god in the woods, but he was still young and the contrast between walking through the snow next to Levi, asking him questions like a curious toddler and undressing him in a cramped bath, was stark.

“It’s just a body, brat.”

The color in the boys face darkened, before he looked up and cleared his throat, nodding – more to himself than Levi – and raising from the ground.

Grabbing a wooden stool from the side of room, he gestured for the god to sit, before he began to strip himself, stopping only when he was left in nothing but his undergarments to avoid wetting his precious leather armor.

“How does it feel? To live so long?”

“Boring.”

A frown spread on his face again, the telltale sign that the brat tried to process his response, trying to find a way to make something meaningful out of the curt answer, he hadn’t put any thought into.

“I always wondered…”, he kneeled down in front of the deity again, as soon as Levi had seated himself, reaching for a bucket with water close by and grabbing a washcloth, before he took one of the gods ankles. “… if it wouldn’t turn me insane to live so long. So many memories and losses and changes.”

Levi watched him, as the guard began to wash his feet and the irony of the little ritual he remembered from the old days in contrast to Eren’s words wasn’t lost on him.

“Some things don’t change.”

“Like what?”, the kid moved his attention to his other foot, rubbing the cloth over Levi’s pale skin, before he began to clean his calves with circling motions.

“Like brats asking stupid questions.”

Eren released an annoyed huff and let go of his legs, getting up to take the bucket and walk around him, before the god heard a surprised sound, followed by shuffling in his back as the young guard seemed to rummage through something.

“Your hair.”

“What about it?”

Feeling a tug on his scalp he turned his head, spotting delicate scissors in Eren’s other hand.

Apparently, the boy had misinterpreted his chaotic strands to be a testament of lifelong neglect, while it actually was a messy bun, random locks loosened and plastered with gore and dirt – most of it from the previous night.

The deity cocked a brow with something akin to apprehension, as he watched the metal tool nearing his head, before a muted _snap_ sounded in his ears and black waves of hair hit his naked shoulders, the tie previously holding them together falling to the ground.

“Oh.”, was Eren’s eloquent comment and the god rolled his eyes, before he returned back into his previous position, staring at the wall in front of him, while the boy began to run his fingers through the black strands.

Soon enough, his attention shifted to his previous task and the young guard scrubbed his back and shoulders, moving on to his chest with reborn hesitation.

“It doesn’t hurt.”, informed the god and Eren nodded, carefully starting to clean his pectorals without touching the wound.

It was long and tedious and Levi thought, that he shouldn’t sense impatience inside himself when he had all the time in the world and no heart left to feel this kind of sentiment, but then again, he had felt a lot during the last hours, leaving him wondering where the random sensations came from that caused him to raise a brow or snort or grin.

Finally, Eren asked him to stand up, the boy himself crouching down, biting his bottom lip while he gathered composure.

Only a human would look at his divine vessel and wonder about indecency.

His gaze bore down on the boy, who had steeled himself, the expression in the guard’s face determined, almost rebellious when he touched Levi’s crotch, the hard stare fixed at his genitals certainly considered _indecent_ by worldly standards, but the god supposed it was Eren’s way to handle the moment.

Rather facing the situation forcefully, than shying away.

Despite his fierce look, making him appear like someone who was heading into war instead of washing a body, Eren’s hands were gentle and tentative, not making quick work of scrubbing his sensitive parts but rather giving them a surprising amount of attention and it took Levi’s fingers stopping the boy’s, to make the guard look up.

“Enough.”

“I, eh…”, deep crimson painted Eren’s face again, his lips almost trembling from embarrassment and just as Levi had reminded himself of empathy and compassion, sparked by something old and unfamiliar, when the boy had cried in the woods in response to his harsh words, he conjured the memories of a past life filled with emotions now, to soothe the child.

“It’s the novelty.”

He crouched down in front of the guard, black orbs taking the youthful expression in, while his black hair stuck uncomfortably to his wet shoulders – the sensation almost managing to put a frown on Levi’s face.

This again… It had been a while, since he cared about the unpleasantness of anything.

“What?” Eren’s wide eyes, staring from his red face drew Levi’s attention once more.

“You never touched someone else.” The boys gaze shied away immediately, his posture shrinking as if he had been caught. “And I’m not human.”

The god stood up, moving his exposed body away in the next second as to not keep his naked groin in front of Eren’s face. “Don’t overthink it, brat.”

He waited patiently until the boy had his act together and reached for another bucket with clean water, to steadily dump its content entirely on top of Levi’s head, washing most of the dirt away he had scrubbed loose, before he gestured to the tub and moved the stool to stand next to it.

When the small man had seated himself inside the warm water, the young guard sat down where the deity’s head touched the wooden rim and reached for a bottle to pour a small amount of it’s content into his hands, rubbing them together until thick lather covered his fingers and began to run them through the silky strands of Levi’s hair, gently massaging his scalp.

“My mother…”, was the meek attempt at rekindling their earlier conversation and the god shook his head slowly, not enough to stop Eren in his motions – the pleasurable feeling of long fingers touching his head wasn’t lost on Levi for reasons he couldn’t quite understand.

“I don’t desire her.”

“Oh.”, murmured Eren, verbosely as ever since they had entered the small bath.

He reached for a wooden bowl and filled it with water before he rinsed Levi’s hair, by carefully emptying it on top of his head, combing through the strands with his fingers all the while to untangle knots and keep it smooth.

Letting it hang loosely over the edge of the tub, he picked another cloth, rubbing over Levi’s upper body a second time, before he considered him clean enough and retrieved a linen towel from the cabinet to wrap it around him.

When the deity was dried off, he was covered in oils that the young man spread all over his body.

Levi had no need for such care as his skin wouldn’t turn dry nor smell, regardless of how long he did or didn’t wash himself, but oddly enough, he found it to be relaxing.

It took a while before Eren finished the process of cleaning him up, as he continued to brush Levi’s hair again, tying it into a knot, before he helped him to dress in what must have been the most expensive peace of fabric the family owned, embroidered with intricate designs covering the soft material.

The god endured it all, never complaining or telling the young man to finish up quickly, somehow sensing that despite the previous awkwardness, it was an act of devotion for the guard. A way to express his beliefs, something he considered to be sacred.

Humans…

It became easier by the minute to remember, why they once had been so dear to him.


	4. A Rainy Summer Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello :) Thank you for the positive feedback so far, I'm really getting into writing this! This chapter is focused on the characters a little (introducing them a bit more, to make things smooth), so there isn't a ton of progress here, but the next chapter has quite some stuff in it, so you can look forward to that :D
> 
> Leave me some comments and kudos if you want or, you know, just keep enjoy reading it - that makes me just as happy :) Thanks for all your support you lovely readers <3

Eren learned several things during the next morning, after blinking his eyes open when the first rays of sunshine touched his face, falling through the window on the other side of the room – the first being, that Leviathan truly didn’t seem to require sleep.

The small man sat on the ground opposite of the young man’s bed like a homeless person who couldn’t afford a chair rather than a god. One knee bent with his arm resting on top of it, while the other leg was spread out, his eyes were on the guard, unmoving just like the rest of his body but looking relaxed instead of stiff. Nevertheless, there was some king of readiness in his posture, as if he was a warrior catching a break without loosing attention to his surroundings, prepared to jump to his feet and fight if a threat revealed itself to him.

He wore nothing but the silky undergarments of the wedding robes, Eren’s father had once been dressed in so many years ago, while the heavy layers to be worn on top lay forgotten on the ground next to him, crumpled into a ball of fabric.

The young man didn’t fault the god for his decision to remove them.

While the dark robes made of midnight blue and black were beautiful, they couldn’t be considered practical but seemed constricting and stiff, ignoring the fact that they didn’t even fit the occasion either, since there was no wedding to be held.

Still, it was the most valuable piece of clothing they owned, and his mother hadn’t hesitated to offer it to the deity.

“You’re still here…”, muttered Eren, as he tried to banish the sleep from both, his eyes, as well as his mind when he rubbed his face fiercely with insistent hands.

“I am.”, answered the god and they both looked at each other for a long, silent moment – the guard wondering why Leviathan hadn’t fled from him and his ridiculous requests when Eren’s head had finally hit the pillow last night and the deity seemingly asking himself the same.  
  


The second thing he came to understand in the early hours of the day, was that clothes truly made a man.

Levi was still pale and fairly expressionless, his black fingers leaving him looking like a predator, now that Eren couldn’t unlearn the fact that it was blood staining those hands for eternity, but the soft, silvery glow of his skin hadn’t left the being ever since they had crossed the border to Sina, giving him an ethereal, unearthly shimmer.

When the young man had finished washing Levi’s face, hands and feet and was done dressing him in the heavy gown of his father, after straightening the fabric once more and ridding it of wrinkles, he brushed the silky, black hair a lot longer than necessary to untangle it, indulging in the smooth feeling of the soft strands gliding through his fingers, before he tied them into a tight knot in the back of Levi’s head.

The black orbs, unnerving and seemingly empty on the previous day, held an eerie beauty for Eren now and he found, that they looked just like a night sky filled with stars, when the daylight hit them the right way, leaving the small man’s eyes with a million twinkles sparkling in their depths.

He looked like a god.

Not like the golden, almighty miracle his people had made him out to be, shining in the light of the heavens and carrying a tender smile on his lips, but a god nonetheless.

There was no second glance needed to see his otherworldly presence, when his expressionless face turned this way and that, slender, black fingers tracing the embroidered patters on the fabric of silken sleeves, while dark orbs surrounded by glowing skin seemed to spot every thought and every secret, making one feel naked and exposed, whenever Levi’s gaze lingered long enough.

“You’re beautiful.”, whispered the boy, when he looked at the man in the center of the small room he had once called his own, still furnished with a small bed and a huge chest, holding the clothing from his childhood days.

Levi had stared at him then, a small furrow showing between his slim brows and his hand had moved as if unconsciously, stopping only centimeters away from touching his own torso when he caught himself, right where the festering wound lay below his fine attire.

It was the first time since Eren could remember, probably the first time in his entire life, that he didn’t speak his prayers to the god in the morning.

Leviathan was right in front of him and it seemed ridiculous, so without deeply thinking about it, the servant refrained from uttering the solemn verses that had fallen from his lips without a second thought throughout every day in the last years.

Instead, he whispered simple words of gratitude while he wove slim strings of silver around Levi’s neck and wrists and adorned his fingers with jeweled rings his mother had laid out for him, to thank the small man for his rescue, for guidance through the woods, for warming his cold body and staying by his side, before he added humble wishes for the coming days.

Health and happiness for his family, the strength to follow his convictions, safety for his people.

The god didn’t answer or interrupt, understanding his words for what they were and accepted the prayer in silence, when the guard stepped back and looked at him, deeming his own work acceptable, as they had offered the deity all the riches they could to show their devotion.

Whatever Levi thought or felt regarding their offerings, he didn’t say and when they finally left the house after what seemed like hours of preparations, Eren also learned, that Leviathan loved children.

He didn’t know why the deity followed him when the young man made his way to the temple to face whatever was waiting for him – inquiries about the happenings behind the border, repercussions for not returning to the sacred grounds on the previous day or condolences for facing the horrors of the woods – but the small man stepped down the stairs of Eren’s home wordlessly and trailed him through the winding alleyways of the village.

They didn’t encounter many people, even less children in the early hours of the morning and most of the few that crossed their path were ushered away by their parents but the sporadic encounters they had while the sun slowly ascended from behind the rooftops, left Eren with a warm feeling in his core.

Levi didn’t smile or coddle the small ones that dared to come closer to him, but always stopped and sunk to his knees, cupping their chubby cheeks as he listened to their stuttered praises and wishes and accepted their gifts with a blank expression, before he leaned in, whispering words into every child’s ear for nobody else to understand.

Some of them were left beaming, others remained frozen with feelings of awe or thoughtfulness written all over their faces and Eren could only guess what the god had shared with them. Answers to their prayers maybe, or predictions of their future.

The flowers they handed him soon adorned great parts of Levi’s hair, sticking out from his knot or behind his ears and dotting other parts of his crown as well but what might have looked absurd on every normal person only served to enhance his appearance further, as he strode over the cobblestone on small, bare feet.

‘Purity’, was the simple answer Eren received when asking the deity if he liked children and why and the guard nodded in understanding.

It seemed the temple had been right in this regard, deeming only the young ones worthy to enter Leviathan’s service, as their hearts were uncorrupted and open. Something the god appeared to cherish like nothing else, considering the amount of time he spent to give his attention to every single child that approached him.  
  


When Eren entered the temple grounds, nobody dared to step in Leviathan’s way, most of the present guards following the small man with their eyes in newborn awe as they took his appearance in and finally came to recognize the being that had been hidden under tattered tunics and grime.

The god himself kept his gaze focused on the buildings ahead, never straying or watching the people around them, while his naked feet followed Eren to the heavy doors silently, making no sound just like the small man himself who had answered the servant sparsely to all his questions on their way, as if his thoughts had been captured by entirely different matters, leaving him pondering and contemplating during their walk.

The best revelation though, was to learn that Levi was still Levi. The man Eren had gotten to know on the previous day, even though his body was covered with fine fabrics and weighed down by masses of jewelry.

He snorted, when two sentries attempted to block his entry into the outer parts of the sanctuary, where Eren intended to meet with the elder to receive instructions and while he probably could have raised a hand to move them out of his path or resume his eerie singing to command them, he cast a sneering look at them instead, telling them to ‘ _get out of his fucking way_ ’.

Only when the guards didn’t comply, did the small man push forward without their consent, their backs hitting the walls soon after when they tried to stop him in a very similar way to Marco landing on his ass after attempting to tackle the deity to the ground.

The small god didn’t bother with the old man waiting behind the door, sitting on a heavy wooden desk and Levi ignored his confused and alarmed expression, while walking to the opposite side of the room, where another passage led into the inner sanctuary – the spot where Leviathan’s own heart was believed to be hidden in the ground.

Eren followed hastily, the eldest right behind him, only to find the deity standing in front of a huge statue, placed in the center of the massive hall under a wide, domed roof with all kinds of colors painting the room from the sunlight that fell through the stained glass of the narrow windows on the opposite side of the sanctuary.

“Levi…?”

The guard stepped forward tentatively, before a wrinkled hand on his shoulder stopped him.

His careful call didn’t receive an answer, as the god kept staring up at his portray, a figure cast from marble that looked nothing like him, as it was tall and broad, its face bare of a nose, eyes or any other features like an unfinished piece, while a long arm reached towards the sky, the large hand holding a shimmering crystal to symbolize Leviathan’s heart.

Falling on his knees, the deity leaned forward, his hand not touching the statue, but the ground in front of its feet soon after, before a tremor run through his shoulders and Eren finally stepped forward, ignoring the eldest who tried to stop him.

“Levi…”

He closed the distance carefully, before he placed a gentle hand on a small, trembling shoulder and the god turned his head at last, empty eyes taking him in, as agony morphed Leviathan’s face into a pained grimace and dark tears tainted his pale cheeks, making it look as if the blackness of his orbs bled from them.

“Hey…”, mumbled the boy, swallowing around a lump in his throat.

He was out of his depth, didn’t know how to deal with a god, didn’t know how to react to the display of an unknown pain, didn’t know how to console an ancient being.

Still, he cupped the god’s face tentatively with shaking fingers and Levi huffed, before his eyes fell to the ground and his body leaned in for his forehead to come to a rest on Eren’s shoulder.

“I didn’t miss this feeling…”, he whispered and added even more lowly “Why did I come here…” and though Eren desperately searched for an answer, his lips stayed sealed when he closed his arms around the slender body to hold him in a tight embrace.

The saddest thing he learned in the beautiful morning hours, was that even gods could cry.

 

~~~

 

“Mikasa!”

Eren crossed the kitchen quickly, to envelope his sister in a crushing hug.

She had spent the last night at Armin’s house after being strictly instructed by Carla not to burden the deity with her presence as they sorted out his accommodations and while the request may have seemed harsh to outsiders, everyone knew that Mikasa wouldn’t dream of resenting her mother for it.

She was practical like that, gathering easily that the plea wasn’t born from the wish to remove her from the house, but simply from the hope to ease the situation.

Their mother loved her and nobody in Sina – least of all Mikasa – would ever doubt that.

Eren had left the temple as soon as Levi had collected himself, uncaring of the consequences that might follow.

The elder would either accept his service to the god and excuse him from his duties for the time being or expel him from the grounds. Either way, the young servant didn’t care, more focused on staying by Leviathan’s side, now that he had shown the great struggle and vulnerability that raged inside of him, after concealing it with snarky words on the day before.

The young man had sensed it soon after getting to know the deity and his suspicions had been confirmed.

Levi hurt immensely and while Eren didn’t know yet how to bring it up and they had spent the way back home in silence, he knew that he couldn’t let the matter rest or watch the god leave until the issue was solved.

“ _Where a wrong is done, you will make it right._ ”, was what his mother had told him all throughout his short life and even though he didn’t have a clue if he was capable of really changing Levi’s situation for the better, being nothing more than an adolescent human boy coming from a tiny village, he was determined to try.

Mikasa returned his embrace tenderly, before her eyes fell on the small man behind them and Eren hurried to introduce them to each other.

“Levi, this is Mikasa, my sister. Mikasa, this is Leviathan.”

The young woman nodded slowly, while the god didn’t react at all, but she didn’t falter under his steady gaze and returned his indifferent look with a scrutinizing glare.

It didn’t manage to elicit a reaction from the deity though and only when the seconds stretched on and turned into minutes did he move the barest bit to lift his right hand from his side.

An odd mix of emotions ran over Mikasa’s features, before they settled with a specific expression, morphing her face into a grimace of disbelief.

Levi remained unmoving in front of her, waiting – as Eren understood now – and her eyes finally darted away, cast to the ground as she bit her bottom lip with anger, before she sank down to her knees, bowing her head with obvious distaste and reached for his darkened fingers to press a short kiss to the back of his hand.

“Eh… well…”, began Eren to mumble but she was on her legs and dashed out of the room, before he could think of a full sentence and only when the initial shock had left him, did he whirl around and looked at the small man with protest evident in his voice.

“What was that?!”

The deity scoffed, turning his head to the servant to regard him with bored eyes. “What do you think? She annoyed me, so I taught her a lesson.”

“A– What? Why– ”, the young man shook his head, Eren’s hands moving through the air in a chaotic gesture to show how thrown off he was. “Why would she annoy you?”

“She challenged me.”, murmured the god now as if already growing tired of the conversation and the brunette stepped closer upon hearing his words, offended that Levi had treated his sister in such a disrespectful way.

“Challenged?!”

As always, Leviathan didn’t even flinch, his head tilting upwards ever so slowly until his eyes landed on Eren’s and he nodded.

“There’s something deformed inside her. I saw it…”, his voice turned into a whisper the longer he spoke, eventually reaching out to run his fingers over Eren’s chest. “Here…”

“You– You can’t be serious…”, stuttered the boy, his brows drawing together but the deity only shrugged, before he shot him a knowing look.

“She’s not from here, is she? She isn’t your blood.”

“Well… I mean…”

A low exhale left his mouth and his shoulders slumped, before he turned away from the small man and grabbed a chair from the table in the middle of the room to sit down.

Mikasa wasn’t born in this village – that much was true – but she had been living with them ever since his father had brought her back from one of his journeys at a very young age and she had never failed to show all the promises of a child born in Sina – kind, humble, honest and deeply devoted.

“No…”

“I don’t condemn her for her heritage.”, started the god easily. “It’s a part of her but doesn’t define who she is. Still, she knows she is none of my own.” His eyes landed on Eren again and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Not like Carla… or you.”

“So, she isn’t good enough for you?”, asked the brunette now in a mix of anger and disbelief.

“No, I couldn’t care less. It is her who is ashamed and defensive, lashing out like a cornered animal and I’m not going to accept shit like that. Better to nip it in the bud.”

Eren, frowning deeply, ran through the memory of the short encounter. It was absurd, really – Mikasa hadn’t even talked, but then again, he didn’t have that ‘I-see-you-heart’ business going on that Levi referred to.

“It wasn’t always easy for her.”, tried the guard to defend his sister, receiving another shrug from the deity.

“And still I saw mortals who lived through war and famine and plague, son’s slaying their fathers and mothers and carrying a brighter heart nonetheless. Not because their minds were so broken and twisted that they eased the suffering in their chest, but because the tides had turned against them and they persevered firm as a rock guided by the light inside of them.”

The small man stepped closer and bent forward the tiniest bit to fix Eren on his low stool with a hypnotizing gaze.

“Don’t worry. Her heart isn’t lost, it just doesn’t deserve my attention either and I won’t forgive insolence from those who aren’t my own. I may allow _you_ to speak freely, brat…”, his hand shot forward and slim, black fingers grabbed the brunettes chin painfully, Eren swallowing in a mix of surprise and sudden fear when Levi’s voice dropped dangerously. “…but you may be better off not forgetting _what exactly_ I am...”

 

~~~

 

The morning carried on without any other negative incidences.

Carla returned from the tiny towns market around noon and cooked for her family, while her knowing eyes never left Mikasa or the small man who had been invited to live with them, as if she sensed by instinct what had transpired between them before she arrived.

Leviathan, of course, didn’t eat with them, but perched himself on a soft cushion in front of a kitchen window and looked outside, his eyes following the playful banter of birds in the sky and the slow summer breeze ruffling the leaves of nearby trees.

They were still in the middle of eating their lunch, when a soft knock announced a new arrival and the door opened seconds after, not waiting for a response as if the visitor was certain, that he was allowed to enter the house freely.

Armin’s blonde head appeared in the door frame next, his hair still tied back from whatever chores he had done earlier, but his clothes seemed clean, hands nervously clutching a bundle.

“I told you not to come here!”, greeted Mikasa, before he had a chance to enter fully and close the door behind himself and the young man froze for a moment, while a single look from their mother silenced Eren’s sister immediately.

“I, uhm…”

“Come in Armin.”, welcomed Carla him with a smile and rose from her spot, walking to one of the cupboards to retrieve a bowl from it. “Sit down, have you eaten?”

The slim shoulders of his friend relaxed, and he smiled, before he shook his head and stepped closer to the table were Eren gave an encouraging nod towards one of the wooden chairs.

“No work today?”, he mumbled between bites of blood pudding and potatoes and received a tentative shrug, Armin already shrinking in on himself again under Mikasa’s harsh look. Though she might be silent, her glare directed at their small friend was equally intimidating as her rude words had been before.

“Stop it.”, Carla didn’t even look at her daughter while uttering the words and set a bowl and a spoon down in front of Armin who thanked her with a shy whisper and a quick nod. “What brings you here?”

“I was wondering…”, the boy fiddled with the spoon, before his searching eyes darted around and back to the small packet he had placed next to himself on the table.

“You came for Levi?”, concluded Eren and Armin blushed, another shy nod following, before he took a small bite from the serving.

“He’s right there around the corner.”, supplied their mother and pointed towards the other side of the room, where a wall hid parts of their modest kitchen. “Why don’t you eat up and then you go see him?”

The young man seemed to accept the suggestion, digging into his food but Eren knew that Armin was aware as much as everyone else on the table that it hadn’t been a proposition.

This was Carla’s house and when she told you to sit and eat, that was what you did.

Watching the small group on the table, the guard wondered if this would be the first of many visits and if his mother had been mentally prepared for it already, when she decided to take the deity in.

There was aversion from some inhabitants of Sina but equally as many seemed to have accepted the small man as their deity – of course they would want to make his acquaintance, bring offerings or pray to him.

Was their house going to turn into a place of pilgrimage?

Spending most of the meal in silence, the clinking of the cutlery in their clay bowls was only disrupted by sporadic questions of their mother and Eren’s short summary of the morning, being a bit more detailed about their way through the village and Levi’s encounters with some of the children, while he shortened the happenings in the temple drastically, telling them nothing more than the fact that Leviathan had visited the sanctuary.

He didn’t lose a single word about the tears that had stained the god’s face.

Only when everyone at the table was done, rose the timid young man from his chair with a nervous glance towards the kitchen and Mikasa was about to follow suit before the words of her mother stopped her, telling her to take the dishes outside and wash them – now.

Funny enough, her stony face reminded Eren of Leviathan himself, but he kept quiet, certain that the comparison wouldn’t be appreciated.

Armin reached for the small bundle, while Mikasa put the dishes and spoons into a larger bowl and walked out into the backyard where a little well waited for her to draw water and the young guard wondered for a brief moment if it was appropriate to follow his friend into the kitchen or not.

Admittedly, a ‘conversation with god’ was basically a prayer and prayers were an intimate affair, granted that one spoke them in the solitude of his mind. With said deity sitting right in front of the believer, Eren couldn’t quite tell what the proper etiquette would be, only that he was incredibly curious, and this was his house after all.

Mind made up, he rose and followed Armin on his heels, entering the kitchen together with his friend under the pretense to introduce him.

“Levi?”

The small, dark figure in front of the window turned his head and Eren realized, that he had sighed dreamily in the same moment he heard an extremely similar sound from his friend.

Leviathan sat in a basic kitchen on a simple cushion, placed on top of a wobbly chair and still, he looked regal and elegant, brightening up the place that might as well have been his palace. It almost made the guard wonder if the deity’s appearance radiated more and more in divine transcendency, the longer he was in close proximity to his heart.

It was probably impossible to get used to the stark contrast between Levi’s crass words, flowing freely whenever he opened his mouth, and the otherworldly dignity he emanated when sitting in silence.

“Uhm…”, Eren shook the thoughts off and pointed at the blonde man next to himself. “This is my friend, Armin. He wanted to see you.”

“Armin.”, echoed the god and his black orbs focused on the stranger, before he rose his hand with a come-hither gesture and the young man complied hastily, crossing the kitchen, before he fell to his knees in front of Levi and bowed his head.

The soft ‘ _Tch_ ’ falling from his lips when Armin leaned forward to kiss the top of his feet, had the boy frozen and he straightened up immediately, forgoing the act of devotion, while Eren’s nose wrinkled.

He _did_ believe in their god and was determined to show him his gratitude, but he wouldn’t go as far as licking his boots either.

Then again, Armin had always been extremely religious, and the servant recalled the images of the previous day, the young man standing in the crowd being bombarded by Mikasa’s rapid words. Had he accepted the grimy being to be their deity from the very first second?

“I bring gifts in your honor…”, whispered the blonde with a low, trembling voice, his eyes glued to the ground and Eren spotted the slightest curl of Levi’s lips in some sort of a resemblance of a smile.

Leaning forward, he let his black fingers ghost over Armin’s heated cheeks, forcing his eyes to look at him, leaving the servant wondering if the god was playing with him, trying to make him more nervous and flustered than he already was, when he heard the fast breathing of his friend pick up even further.

Would Armin have a meltdown in their kitchen? The mere thought of the deity tainting himself by touching his worthless body was probably pure blasphemy for the shy boy.

“Go on then.”, said Levi when it became obvious that Eren’s friend wouldn’t move, frozen in place as he was while he swallowed uselessly for the umpteenth time as if it would help him to find his voice again.

“Eh…”, Armin cast his eyes to the ground once more, looking at the small bundle he had placed to the god’s feet and nodded slowly. “Yes, your heavenliness.”

The snort that broke free from Levi’s mouth had him blushing profusely, Eren could tell, since even his friends exposed neck and the tips of his ears, peeking out from his blonde strands were colored in bright red now.

Surprisingly, Armin didn’t falter – or maybe he was just too scared to speak and simply tried to keep himself occupied – and reached for the bundle, untying the cloth that held its contents together, before he laid them out in front of the small man.

“Silver to– to ward off evil.”, he held an intricate piece of delicate jewelry up for the god’s inspection. A headpiece, as far as Eren could tell, the slim strings of silver woven into a fragile net to cover Levi’s hair and fall into his forehead in an elaborate design, almost like the complex crowns of the female members of the southern nobility.

Leviathan tilted his neck in contemplation, before he bowed his head and Armin gasped in shock at the submissive gesture. Understanding dawned in his features when the god didn’t move, and he slid closer on his knees, carefully removing some of the flowers still sticking in Levi’s hair, before he attached the headpiece, securing it in place with jeweled hairpins, that were part of the silvery offering.

Immediately, he scooted away, eyes on the ground again while the deity sat up and Armin’s trembling fingers reached for the next item in his bundle.

“The hymns of Leviathan.”, he offered a leather-bound booklet. “Poems and odes singing your praises.”

“What’s that?”

The blonde man looked up, confusion flittering through his face, before he realized that Levi had fixed his gaze on the last item in the bundle.

“Rose quartz?”, inquired the deity and Eren’s friend gave a careful nod.

“How thoughtful.”

Levi’s calm voice didn’t give much away, not if he really considered it a good offering or was sarcastic and Eren frowned, feeling the nervous waves rolling off of Armin second hand by now.

“I– “

The god stood up, not waiting for the blonde boy to utter his sentence and Armin flinched from the sudden movement, shaking now, only for it to be completely ignored by the deity who bent down to pick the huge gem up and turn it in his hand this way and that.

Leviathan didn’t look upset per se, but something was off in his face and Eren wracked his brain to figure out what it was that had elicited this kind of reaction from the small man.

Eyes darting to Armin and back to the god, the guard shot another look at the gem, pieces suddenly falling into place inside of his head.

Rose quartz. Love, fertility, security, emotions – The _heart_ stone.

“Levi?”, he asked carefully, trying to break the god out of his reverie.

It was impossible to tell what was going on inside of Leviathan’s head, but the symbolism of the stone might very well set off a negative reaction in light of the few things Eren had learned in the last 48 hours.

The small man blinked lazily, looking at Eren and returning his gaze back to Armin next, only to find a trembling bundle of nerves sitting at his feet and the deity huffed, his eyebrows rising slightly and a small movement in his black orbs convincing the young guard that Levi had rolled his eyes at the display of fear and devotion.

“Armin.”, his voice was almost… tender. The fragility of it shattered in the next second when he continued, still calm but commanding now. “Get up.”

Eren’s friend got to his feet in an instant and the deity sighed as if he truly felt his immense age in every bone and muscle of his body, joints stinging, and skin stretched taut over every bump and dent of his flesh, while in reality, Levi looked so young and so much healthier than the day before already.

“You don’t have to fear me. What are you afraid of?”

The young man almost jumped when black digits connected with his scrawny chest, Levi staring at his core intently with hooded eyes, before black orbs focused back on Armin’s face and the god cupped his cheek. “I see…”

Yet again, Eren felt as if he had missed something. Whatever Leviathan had seen in Armin’s wildly beating heart, it didn’t seem to bother him, and his gaze found its way back to the rose quartz, still resting in his palm.

“I’m afraid it won’t be enough to heal my heart.”, his hand dropped from Armin’s face and the blonde boy finally dared to look at the small man. “Thank you though. I will hold it dear.”

Armin beamed – albeit shyly – at that and nodded, before he reached for Levi’s fingers and pressed a kiss to the back of his hand, uttering low words of gratitude.

The god didn’t respond, and his face returned to the blank mask he had carried most of the time since Eren had met him but looking at the deity’s black pools still resting on his friend’s expression, the brunette couldn’t shake the feeling, that if Levi would have a heart, it would have been warmed by Armin’s soft praises and declarations of loyalty.

 

~~~

 

The afternoon sun began to set, sinking slowly behind the rooftops but still illuminating Sina with it’s soft glow, when Leviathan stepped onto the sandy road leading from the village to the border of their little realm.

Eren trailed him idly, watched the deity as he walked into the golden fields swishing gently in a tender breeze, his hands hovering over the yellow corn, black digits touching the plants now and then as Levi run his fingers through the amber vegetation.

The scene was one of pure beauty – a single person under the colorful sky filled with purple and crimson hues – but it looked lonely.

All in all, the day had been rather uneventful aside from their visit to the sanctuary and the mishap with Eren’s sister. Though the servant had wondered if their humble house would be flooded by pilgrims in the future, there had been no visitors except for Armin, no prayers sung in the center of Sina, no festival or procession filling the streets.

A god walked among them on the earth – and nobody cared.

And now, as he followed the forlorn figure through the fields, Eren deeply began to understand what Levi had tried to tell him on the previous day.

The people didn’t need him. They wanted a glorified image to look up to, something greater than themselves, not something real made from flesh and bones that was flawed and able to bleed.

It was only now, that the young guard got a real grasp on how lonely the deity truly was and though he held great power and had existed for centuries, there seemed to be no purpose to his life, nothing of value left to care or aim for.

Leviathan had offered his heart to them and while the people hadn’t forgotten, they didn’t seem to remember either – not really.

He was, in some way, an instrument for them to strive for their own ideals but the person himself, the being that Levi was, held no value to the people aside from the memories of his great sacrifice.

Still, the small man was here, had followed Eren albeit unwillingly and stayed and the young guard couldn’t quite figure out why.

Levi didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he didn’t smile. He existed, drifting in a state of simply _being there_ – probably since centuries.

Maybe he had hoped, that the young guard could bring a change to his dull life, that his stay in Sina would rekindle something inside of him or maybe he wanted to unite with his heart again. So far though, he only appeared either pained or indifferent.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

The deity hummed in confirmation, naked feet still taking slow, deliberate steps through the field that almost swallowed his small body, before he came to a halt and turned his head over his shoulder to fix his black orbs on the brunette.

“Daunting though…”

He stepped closer to the god, his eyes questioning as he didn’t quite understand what it was in the dreamy evening view, that made the divine being feel intimidated.

“What do you mean?”

Levi sighed, exhaustion creeping into the soft exhale as his hand ran through the corn another time.

“The soil, the plants… even the people here are an extension of myself. It feels overwhelming, and yet…”

“…lonely?”

The deity didn’t answer, but closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if the air could fill the void in his chest if only he inhaled long enough.

“Why did you stay?”, whispered the young guard and Levi’s lids snapped open, his dark orbs taking Eren in for a long, silent moment, before he turned away and continued his solemn stroll through the fields.

“Who knows, brat…”

Rolling his eyes, the guard followed while the sun sank rapidly now, and darkness began to creep in on them, washing the colors from the sky and tinting the golden field and the lush grass in between with pale hues of blue and gray.

“Wait, Levi.”

There was no reaction to his plea and the servant reached out to grab the deity by his bony shoulder and turn him around, as soon as he reached him.

“I– “, he bit his lip, tried to collect himself and find the right words. “You’re not alone. I’m here, right? And my mother and Armin. You don’t have to feel like this anymore. We’re here and you can stay as long as you want.”

The vastness of Levi’s black eyes drew him in and he swallowed uselessly, before he amended his own words. “As long… as we live.”

When Levi’s gaze shied away, it left him frowning, wondering if there was something hidden in the dark depths, he was not supposed to see.

He squeezed the small shoulder tighter, hoping to coax a reaction, a look from the deity, but the god stayed frozen in place, gaze cast to the ground and the young guard focused on him so intently, that the sudden sensation on his forehead startled him, his hand falling away before he turned his head in all directions.

“What…”

He tilted his head upwards, when another cold touch rolled down his cheek and Eren stared at the heavy barrier looming over them and obscuring the stars above.

The third drop hit his nose, the fourth his lips, the fifth, sixth and seventh hardly distinguishable as it began to trickle lightly but constant.

Eren’s eyes wandered back to the small figure, the lonely god in a field of corn under the vast sky, looking lost in the very lands that should have been his home, that were indeed a part of him.

“Levi…”

The brunette blinked through the wetness that hung in his lashes and the deity looked up, his gaze finding Eren’s who couldn’t quite believe what was happening but sensed the weight of this moment, could almost feel it pressing down on them.

There was no mistaking the sound of water hitting the plants around them, the sensation of the cold liquid running down their necks while the world around them became shrouded by a gray curtain that grew heavier and heavier with every passing heartbeat.

In Sina, the land of endless summer, warmth and sunshine, where the wind was always gentle, and the sky was clear… It _rained_.


End file.
